Lot 111
Lot 111
ANCIENNE COLLECTION DE MONSIEUR ET MADAME MUNICH, COUPLE D'AMATEURS ÉCLAIRÉS
ATTRIBUÉ À LOUYSE MOILLON (1610-1696)

Coupe de raisins et pêches

Price Realised EUR 50,400
Estimate
EUR 50,000 - EUR 80,000
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ATTRIBUÉ À LOUYSE MOILLON (1610-1696)

Coupe de raisins et pêches

Price Realised EUR 50,400
Price Realised EUR 50,400
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Details
ATTRIBUÉ À LOUYSE MOILLON (1610-1696)
Coupe de raisins et pêches
huile sur panneau
50,5 x 66 cm (1978 x 26 in.)
Provenance
Vente anonyme, Stockholm, novembre 1960 (comme 'attribué à Isaac Soreau') (selon D. Alsina, 2009, op. cit. infra).
Chez François Heim, Paris, 1960-1961 (selon D. Alsina, 2009, op. cit. infra).
Robert Denon, Paris, 1974-1979 (selon D. Alsina, 2009, op. cit. infra).
Collection particulière, France (selon D. Alsina, 2009, op. cit. infra).
Collection particulière de la région parisienne.
Literature
M. Faré, Le grand siècle de la nature morte en France. Le XVIIe siècle, Fribourg-Paris, 1974, reproduit en noir et blanc p. 59 (comme 'Louise Moillon').
C. Wright, The French Painters of the Seventeenth Century, Londres, 1985, p. 233 (comme 'Louise Moillon').
D. Alsina, Louyse Moillon (Paris, vers 1610-1696). La nature morte au Grand Siècle. Catalogue raisonné, Dijon, 2009, p. 69, p. 179, n°49 (comme 'Louyse Moillon') et p. 326, reproduit en couleurs p. 179, fig. L.
L. Stevenson, Louise Moillon, Londres, 2024, p. 77 (comme 'less reliably by Moillon') et p. 101, sous la note 23.
FURTHER DETAILS
ATTRIBUTED TO LOUYSE MOILLON (1610-1696), A BOWL OF GRAPES AND PEACHES, OIL ON PANEL

Dated to circa 1641 by Dominique Alsina in her monograph on the artist, this still life with grapes and peaches would come from the final period of the artist's youth (D. Alsina, 2009, op. cit. supra).

With a dual artistic lineage, Louyse Moillon (1610-1696) was destined to become a painter. Nicolas Moillon (1555-1619), her father, was a painter at the Académie Saint-Luc and spent much time in the Saint-Germain-des-Près district of Paris, which was home to a community of protestant and northern painters. In addition to this, her step-father, François Garnier (1600-1672), her mother's second husband, specialised in a genre that was still in its infancy at the dawn of the 17th century: still life.

Louyse Moillon's early still lifes are marked by the protestant calm of her surroundings, and the spirituality of the fruit she painted had a long-term influence on the vanitas paintings that were to come later. Her first work, signed and dated 1629, exemplifies the precocity of her talents: it was painted when the artist was just nineteen years old (Sotheby's, Paris, 27 June 2013, lot 40).

The works of the 1640s show developing influences, drawing more from Caravaggio (1571-1610) than from the northern artists. To quote Sterling, we can take the vine leaf ‘(...) with its precise outline and robust veins’, as a marker of this change of direction in her art. (C. Sterling, La nature morte de l'Antiquité au XXe siècle, Paris, 1985, p. 75). It is skillfully exploited in a work in the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza dated 1637 (inv. no. CTB.1956.12). Our painting, which delicately introduces a certain nervous energy in the handling of the paint, whilst maintaining an the aspect of silence, appears to be on the borderline between these two moments of still life in France, marking the shift from calm to a more grandiose approach to composition.

Although the work was published from 1974 to 2009 as an autograph by Louyse Moillon, Dominique Alsina now suggests an ‘attribution’ to the painter, as does historian Lesley Stevenson in her latest book on the artist (L. Stevenson, 2024, op. cit. supra).
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Bérénice VerdierAssociate Specialist
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