Neal Auction 2012

30 105. Charles-André, called Carle, Van Loo (French, 1705-1765) , “A Sleeping Shepherd”, probably c. early 1760s, red chalk (and graphite sketches of a left hand, and a head, at top right), inscribed in umber ink by a mid-18th c. hand “VanLoo Père” at bottom, on cream-colored laid paper with untranslated watermark in four lines (beneath right arm), and countermark of a symbol (above left knee), with punctures for stitching on right edge, 12 1/2 in. x 17 in., in a modern mount, extensively numbered and inscribed. $2000/3000 Provenance: Art Market, New York; James R. Lamantia, Jr., New Orleans and New York. Note: The most illustrious member of a famous five-generation dynasty of French draftsmen and painters originally from Flanders, Carle Van Loo is here contemporaneously labeled as “Père” to distinguish him from his son Jules-César-Denis Van Loo (1743-1821, then in his twenties), who emigrated to Turin—like his father—and painted at the Piedmontese court. Carle, born at Nice, was trained at Turin from 1712 and Rome from 1714, where he studied with the sculptor Pierre Legros II (1666-1719), who was particularly celebrated for his fine drawings. Upon moving to Paris in 1719, Carle himself won a first prize in drawing from the Académie Royale in 1723, and was awarded the coveted Prix de Rome in 1724. Another of his drawings took first prize at the Accademia di San Luca in 1728, and he began to demonstrate the stylistic eclecticism which distinguished his career, varying from the refined classicism of Raphael and Carlo Maratta to the dramatic dynamism of his own best contemporaries, of whom François Boucher was his particular friend. After another highly creative stay in Turin (1732-34), Van Loo began a brilliant career in Paris in the following year, when his 1735 admission to the Académie Royale was immediately followed by a host of official, religious, and royal commissions. He was ennobled in 1751, and appointed First Painter to the King in 1762; Baron von Grimm called him “the greatest painter in Europe.” This very splendid sheet (despite its evidence of having been removed from an album) seems too regular and finished to be merely a preparatory sketch for a painting: rather it shows every evidence of being a presentation drawing in its own right, exemplifying the precise, technically perfect mastery which has made Van Loo’s drawings conspicuously rare on the market. References: Laurie G. Winters, “Carle Vanloo,” Grove Dictionary of Art, Jane Turner, ed., London, 1996, 34 vols., vol. 19, 645-647; Annamaria Petrioli Tofani et alia, Disegni dell’Europa Occidentale dall’Ermitage, Florence, 1982, p. 86, no. 99, fig. 95 (dynamic style, with inscription very similar to this); Pierre Rosenberg and François Bergot, French Master Drawings from the Rouen Museum, Washington, 1981, pp. 88-89, no. 114, pl. 74 (sculptural style: this technique). 105