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HYACINTHE RIGAUD (PERPIGNAN 1659-1743 PARIS) ET CHARLES SEVIN DE LA PENAYE (FONTAINEBLEAU 1685-1740 PARIS)
Portrait présumé d'Alexis César Freslon, marquis d'Acigné, de trois-quarts
huile sur toile
144 x 107 cm. (56 x 42 in.)
Provenance
Collection de la comtesse de Segouy, Bayonne, France.
Collection Georges Wildenstein (1892-1963), Paris, en 1934.
Confisqué par l'Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), château de Moyre, Coulombiers, 7 août 1940.
Acquis par le Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring (1893-1946), via Walter Andreas Hofer (1893-vers 1971) (no. inv. RM 1018).
Récupéré par la Monuments Fine Arts and Archives Section, Berchtesgaden.
Transféré au Munich Central Collecting Point (MCCP no. inv. 5097), Munich.
Revenu à Paris grâce au Munich Central Collecting Point, 23 mai 1946.
Restitué à la famille Wildenstein, Paris, 30 octobre 1947.
Vente anonyme, Christie's, New York, 27 janvier 2010, lot 297.
Collection particulière, France.Literature
Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Institut, ms. 624, fol. 40 verso et ms. 625, fol. 34.
J. Roman, Le livre de raison du peintre Hyacinthe Rigaud publié avec une introduction et des notes, Paris, 1919, pp. 191-192.
Répertoire des biens spoliés en France pendant la guerre, 1939-1945, Berlin, 1947, II, p. 79, n°1328, reproduit en noir et blanc p. 102b.
New York, Frick Collection, MS 2 / Series II Box 25/17-18, 1950-1987 (archives Gallenkamp).
H. Frotier de La Messelière, Filiations bretonnes, Mayenne, 1976, II, p. 115.
A. James-Sarazin, Hyacinthe Rigaud (1659-1743), thèse de doctorat sous la direction de B. Jestaz, Paris, École pratique des hautes études, 2003, I, n°1080.
C. Marcheteau de Quincay, Portrait dit du comte de Gacé de Hyacinthe Rigaud Caen, 2006, p. 22, sous la note 95, p. 29.
A. James-Sarazin, 'Nouvel éclairage sur Hyacinthe Rigaud dessinateur', L'Estampille. L'Objet d'art, février 2011, 465, p. 57.
S. Perreau, Hyacinthe Rigaud Catalogue concis de l'oeuvre, Sète, 2013, pp. 228-229, n°*P.1127.
J.-M. Dreyfus, les Archives diplomatiques, Le Catalogue Goering, Paris, 2015, p. 458, n°RM1018 / F1149, reproduit en noir et blanc p. 459.
A. James-Sarazin, J.-Y. Sarazin, Catalogue raisonné Hyacinthe Rigaud 1659-1743, Dijon, 2016, II, pp. 469-470, n°P.1375, reproduit en couleurs p. 469.Exhibited
Caracas, Museo de Bellas Artes, Cinco siglos de arte francés, 24 mai-24 juin 1977, n°15.Post Lot Text
HYACINTHE RIGAUD AND CHARLES SEVIN DE LA PENAYE, PRESUMED PORTRAIT OF ALEXIS CÉSAR FRESLON, MARQUIS D'ACIGNÉ, THREE-QUARTER LENGTH, OIL ON CANVAS
Along with his friends François de Troy (1645-1730) and Nicolas de Largillierre (1656-1746), Hyacinthe Rigaud dominated European portraiture in the first half of the 18th century. This pre-eminence in the genre begins around 1700 with the double commission of the portraits of Louis XIV (Paris, musée du Louvre) and of his grandson, Philippe V of Spain (Versailles, musée national des châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon). These years coincide with his double reception, as both a portraitist and a history painter, to the Académie Royale de peinture et de sculpture.
The artist is at the time in full possession of his craft, which he uses to impose his singular style, and continues to develop his repertoire of poses by reinventing and recombining ancient representational modes according to both his whim and the needs of his clients. Thus, the nobles of the sword who looked to Rigaud to have their likeness captured would be offered four or five generic combinations of poses and decorative details, which they could subsequently alter and modify as to project and represent their own personal exploits.
This is how Rigaud created between 1704 and 1705, for the maréchal de Vauban (1633-1707), an entirely original pose (‘attitude’) and dress (‘habillement’), to paraphrase his accounts book. The model is shown in a three quarter pose to the right, dressed in a light-brown justaucorps with a brocade lapel upon which is worn a velour-lined breastplate with a white scarf tied across it. He faces the viewer with both hands on the marshal’s baton, leading the eye to the front-facing burgonet, with its lyre-shaped nasal, at its base. The whole is set off against a distant mountainous landscape populated by frail trees, whose darkened sky, dimly lit by an orange light, is reminiscent of the fires after a battle. This composition (private collection ; Ariane James-Sarazin (hereafter 'AJS'), Catalogue raisonné Hyacinthe Rigaud 1659-1743, (hereafter 'cat. rais.'), II, n°P.895) became very popular among European superior officers shortly after its adoption by Vauban; the inventor of the pré carré (a double line of fortresses created by Vauban in the north of France designed to defend the kingdom from the Spanish low countries) is succeeded by the maréchal Conrad de Rosen (1629-1715), painted only the following year (1705, collection particulière ; AJS, cat.rais., II, n°P.914) and the maréchal de Montrevel (1645-1716), whose portrait (current whereabouts unknown, AJS, cat.rais., II, n°*P.1202) is recorded in the accounts book of the artist in 1711. These early iterations are followed by versions where the simple, contemporary plastron is replaced by a full, and more archaic armour, as can be seen in the portrait of the marquis de Belle-Isle (1684-1761), dated to 1713-1714 (Manom, Château de La Grange ; AJS, cat. rais., II, n°P.1259) and the 1721 picture of the emissary of the king of Spain, Patricio Laules Y Briaen (1676-1739) (collection particulière ; AJS, cat.rais., II, n°P.1372), the former before a battlefield, the later in a palace.
According to the artist’s accounts book, it is in 1721 and for 1 500 livres that Alexis César Freslon, marquis d’Acigné (1691-1748) (described as ‘M[onsieu]r le m[ar]q[ui]s d’Assigny jusqu’aux genoux ; l’habillement répété d’après celui du maréchal de Montrevel’), opted for this proven composition. In 2011 we postulated, with all the necessary precautions, to link the aforementioned picture with the painting which previously belonged to the collection of the comtesse de Segouy, for which there exists a drawn ricordo in the collection of the Albertina in Vienna (AJS, cat. rais., II, n°D.134), as well as a painted reduction in a private collection (cited by AJS, cat.rais., II, under n°P.1375). Unlike our painting, the ricordo and the reduction both show the model without the cross of the order of Saint Louis.
Rigaud entrusted the painting of the sitter’s dress to one of his closest collaborators, Charles Sevin de La Penaye (1685-1740), for which he received 120 livres. Born into an old Breton aristocratic family, Alexis César Freslon, who died without descendance, commissioned the painting on the occasion of his union - which took effect as early as 1719 - to Françoise Sophie Gouyon (1701-1765); a portrait of her as Cérès, shown three-quarter length, (‘jusqu’aux genoux’), also figures in the artist’s accounts book for the year 1721. Marital bliss would be, however, short lived; a judicial decision from the Châtelet de Paris prescribed on the 25th of June 1728 the division of the couple’s property, which was shortly followed by a residential separation. As is his habit, and unlike Verlaine’s beloved in his Rêve familier, who is every time not quite the same yet not quite another, Rigaud breaks the explicit link between Vauban’s portrait and this one through the alteration of several key details. Here, the head turns in the opposite direction to the torso, adding a sense of naturalism to a pose that was, by then, highly codified. Moreover, the marshal’s staff is replaced by an elegant and far less military cane adorned with a gold chain, which we also find in the portrait of Thomas Legendre (1673-1738), seigneur de Collandre, painted in 1713 (Aix-en Provence, musée Granet ; AJS, cat. rais., II, n°P.1261). The cane, as well as the marshal’s baton, is a motif which can be naturally associated with the drawing of the joint hands in one of Rigaud’s studies currently held in musée Fabre in Montpellier (AJS, car. rais., II, n°E.1).
Our painting is a masterful display of the distinctive traits which define, then as now, the artist’s style. Rigaud builds up a likeness with clarity, one which is empathic without being haughty, dynamic without being artificial, true without being prosaic, full of nobility yet not intimidating, and which, despite the time’s strict codification of the genre, never loses sight of the man behind the portrait.
We would like to thank Madame Ariane James-Sarazin for writing the following catalogue entry and for having specified that the clothes of our sitter were painted by Rigaud’s close collaborator, Charles Sevin de la Penaye.Special notice
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