Lot 136: GABRIEL-JACQUES DE SAINT-AUBIN

GABRIEL-JACQUES DE SAINT-AUBIN PARIS 1724 - 1780 PORTRAIT OF MICHEL-JEAN SEDAINE, WRITING AT HIS DESK Black chalk, with brown ink framing lines; bears inscription, verso, possibly autograph: portrait de M r . Sedaine fait d'après nature / en 1749 par G. de S t . Aubin 211 by 249 mm

Possibly E. Dacier, Gabriel de Saint-Aubin, peintre, dessinateur et graveur (1724-1780), Paris 1931, vol. II, p. 44, cat. no. 240 (no dimensions or medium given);
M. Ledbury, ''Vous avés achévé mes tableaux': Michel-Jean Sedaine and Jacques-Louis David', in British Journal for eighteenth-century studies, 2000, no. 23, pp. 59, 79, note 9;
D. Charlton and M. Ledbury et al, Michel-Jean Sedaine (1719-1797): Theatre, Opera and Art (ed. ), Aldershot 2000, p. 152, reproduced fig. 2, p. 276

Possibly Marquis d'Aigremont (according to Dacier),
his sale, Paris, Gauthier Pillet, 3-7 April 1866, lot 349 (?);
sale, Paris, Audap Godeau Solanet, 11 March 1987, lot 199;
with Richard Day, London, 1989-90, where bought by present owners

Michel-Jean Sedaine (1719-1797) was a writer and dramatist, best known for his domestic comedy and operettas, the most enduring of which is Le Philosophe sans le savoir, first performed at the Théâtre Français in 1765. He was elected secretary of the Académie Royale d'Architecture in 1768, entitling him to a suite of rooms in the Louvre, where he established a salon visited by some of the most important artists, writers and architects of 18th Century Paris, among whom was Gabriel de Saint-Aubin.

His early life was somewhat less illustrious: Sedaine was known as the 'mason-poet' due to his impoverished beginnings as a stonemason. It was this, however, that introduced him to the artistic world, as his first employer was Jacques Buron, maternal grandfather of Jacques-Louis David.υ1 It has been suggested that Buron is also how Sedaine came to meet Saint-Aubin, during the artist's employment at Blondel's École des Arts, where he taught from 1747.υ2

The present sheet is one of a number of drawings by Saint-Aubin connected to Sedaine. The first was an illustration drawn in a copy of the author's first collection of poetry, Pièces Fugitives, printed anonymously in 1752. When a revised edition was published as the Recueil de poésies in 1760, the etched design was used as the frontispiece illustration, depicting a portrait medallion of the author encircled by putti.υ3 Indeed, Sedaine dedicated two of the poems in the Recueil to Saint-Aubin, one of which refers to Gabriel's 1753 painting of Laban:
Leave behind all these Homeric heroes / And the tale of old Laban... Instead, draw for Cythera / Some tender, gallant subject, / A nothing, a light sketch, / On this square of white paper.υ4

Saint-Aubin illustrated his own copy of the poems throughout, which Kim de Beaumont believes 'marks the begining of his practice of drawing for his own pleasure in the margins of printed books'. One of the illustrations, underneath the poem Épître à mon habit, depicts the author adoring a fabulous new coat, with a clear resemblance to the subject as we see him here.υ5 The present portrait has been dated to 1753,υ6 when Sedaine was thirty-four and just emerging as a literary success. Saint-Aubin captures him in the midst of his writings: a literary man absorbed by his pen and paper and surrounded by his books. Another portrait by Saint-Aubin is also known, sketched rapidly on the reverse of a letter from the Marquis de Marigny to Sedaine dated 1771, showing the author later in life, with a somewhat heavier countenance.υ7

The other artist closely associated with Sedaine was David, whose grandfather had employed him as a stone-mason. It is thought that the young artist lodged with Sedaine at the Louvre between 1769 and his departure for Rome in 1775, giving him access to an extraordinary centre of artistic and academic activity, normally only available to Academicians.υ8 Testament to the relationship are the five portraits by David of Sedaine, his wife and their children, among which is the beautiful black chalk roundel in the Louvre, thought to be either Madame Sedaine or their eldest daughter Jeanne-Suzanne.υ9 David's painted portrait of Sedaine of 1772 is now known only from an engraving by Pierre-Charles Lévesque, making the present drawing possibly the most important surviving image of the writer.υ10

1. M. Ledbury, op. cit., pp. 59-60
2. K. de Beaumont, 'Reconsidering Gabriel de Saint-Aubin: The Biographical Context for His Scenes of Paris', in Gabriel de Saint-Aubin 1724-1780, exhib. cat., New York and Paris 2007-8, p. 47, note 94
3. Ibid, p. 32, see fig. 17
4. Ibid, p. 33
5. Ibid.
6. D. Charlton and M. Ledbury, see Literature, p. 276
7. Ibid., p. 276, see p. 154, fig. 3
8. Ibid., pp. 62-3
9. Ibid., pp. 275-6. See also P. Rosenberg and L.-A. Prat, Jacques-Louis David 1748-1825, Catalogue raisonné des dessins, Paris 2002, vol. I, p. 85, cat. no. 66
10. For the Lévesque engraving, see Ledbury 2000, p. 60, fig. 1