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Jean Baptiste Pater (Valenciennes 1695-1736 Paris)
- Fête Galante: La Barque de Plaisir

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Jean Baptiste Pater (Valenciennes 1695-1736 Paris)
Fête Galante: La Barque de Plaisir
Estimate
(Set Currency)
    $400,000 - $600,000

Sale Information

Sale 2282
Old Master & 19th Century Paintings, Drawings, & Watercolors
27 January 2010
New York, Rockefeller Plaza

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Lot Description

Jean Baptiste Pater (Valenciennes 1695-1736 Paris)
Fête Galante: La Barque de Plaisir
oil on canvas
29 3/8 x 36 5/8 in. (74.6 x 93.7 cm.)

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Pre-Lot Text

THE PROPERTY OF A WEST COAST COLLECTOR

Provenance

J.W.Q.D., Esq. collection, London; his sale, Paris, 25 February 1869, lot 55.
Private collection, Los Angeles.

Literature

F. Ingersoll-Smouse, Pater, Paris, 1928, p. 46, no. 98.

Exhibited

New York, Berry-Hill Galleries, Visions and Vistas, 25 January-4 March 2000, s.n. (catalogue by R.B. Simon).

Lot Notes

Le Barque de Plaisir owes an obvious debt to Watteau's famous reception piece for the Academy, The Pilgrimage to the Island of Cythera (1717; Paris, Musée du Louvre, Paris), with its myriad lovers embarking and disembarking a little pleasure craft that sails them to and from the island of Love. It shares even closer affinities, however, with a beautiful painting by Watteau's other faithful follower, Nicolas Lancret (1690-1743), Les Plaisirs du bain (c.1735, Paris, Musée du Louvre). As in Lancret's painting, and distinct from Watteau's masterpiece, young women playfully bathe in the narrow river through which the boat will wind its way, observed by elegant lovers from the shore.

In characteristic fashion, Pater evokes his scene of winsome couples in a verdant landscape with feathery brushwork and easy humor, and a palette of pearly pinks, silvery greys and acidic blues that is unmistakably his own. Although his pictures are difficult to date with any precision, Le Barque de Plaisir is probably from the early 1730s. A smaller, variant version of the composition (62.5 x 79 cm.) was in the collection of Alfred de Rothschild, London, as of 1884 (see Ingersoll-Smouse, no. 70, fig. 166).

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