Lot 411: Attributed to Hugues Taraval (French, 1729-1785),

Attributed to Hugues Taraval (French, 1729-1785), "Venus and Cupid", c. 1775, oil on canvas, oval, 45 in. x 38 1/2 in., in a shaped giltwood frame.

Note: Though born in Paris, Jean-Hugues Taraval spent his first twenty years at the Swedish court in Stockholm with his father Guillaume-Thomas Taraval (1701-1750), his first teacher. He then entered the prominent Paris studio of Jean-Baptiste Pierre (1714-1789), from which Taraval won the coveted Prix de Rome at age 25 He spent the years 1756-59 at the École des Élèves Protégés in Paris and 1759-63 at the Académie Française in Rome. He was admitted to the Académie Royale in Paris in 1765, was received as a full member in 1769, and was appointed a professor in 1785 He received a half-dozen of Paris' most prestigious commissions for decorative paintings between 1762 and 1781; he ably combined the individual styles of his master Pierre, François Boucher, and Charles-Joseph Natoire. The present painting of a youthful Venus ­ identified by the doves n her triumphal chariot ­ tenderly assisting the infant Eros as he splashes in a tranquil stream, is actually a sensitive allegory, suggesting the young love-god's requisite "cooling off" as he contemplates further inflammations of the hearts of mortals. Reference: Simon Lee, "[Jean-]Hugues Taraval," Grove Dictionary of Art, Jane Turner ed., 34 vols, London, 1996, vol. 30, p. 343.