Lot 96: Gaspard Gresly (Isle-sur-le-Doubs 1712-1756 Besan‡on)

A candelit interior with figures around a table oil on canvas 27 3/8 x 33 7/8 in. (69.6 x 86.1 cm.) NOTES This recently discovered canvas is an important addition to the oeuvre of the little-known French genre painter, Gaspard Gresly. Gresly was a native of the mountainous Jura region of the Franche-Comt‚ which abuts the French border with Switzerland near Neufchƒtel. His father was, like many from this area, a glassmaker who had set up his furnace in the forest near Isle-sur-le-Doubs. From there the family was forced to move to Morreau in 1726, where, shortly thereafter, the artist was apprenticed as a painter, almost certainly to Pierre-Antoine Fraichot (1690-1765) who specialized in still lifes, and whose daughter he married in 1751. Although the Franche-Comt‚ is a remote rural area, far from fashionable Paris and the sophisticated artistic community which made the capital its base, Gresly was apparently a successful painter, patronized by a local aristocracy centered around Besan‡on. It was possibly through contacts such as the Boisot family that he might have seen pictures like the copy of Georges de la Tour's Saint Joseph, the print collection of the Abbey of Saint Vincent, or the collection of the Marquis de Marmier in which he might have seen the Peasant Family by Le Nain now in the Louvre. The lack of documented or dated works makes it hard to establish a secure chronology of the short career of Gaspard Gresly, however, the scholar who has studied his work most closely, Marie-Dominique Joubert, puts a series of candlelit scenes at the beginning of his career. Thereafter, he opened up to more highly colored genre scenes of lacemakers, girls with cherries and with spinning wheels, and the occasional history or religious composition. As his career progressed, Gresly seemed to leave the culture of the seventeenth century behind him and to embrace more emphatically the coy and colorful world of the dix-huitiŠme siŠcle ; the charming vignettes of daily life we know so well from the genre pictures of Chardin, Pierre and L‚pici‚. This picture, which is unusual for its horizontal format, belongs to the end of the first phase of Gresly's career. The very earliest pictures show a fascination with the Caravaggesque drama of candlelit scenes. The palette is usually monochromatic, and the light source, though sometime shielded by a paper cover, is always visible. Georges de la Tour has been suggested as an inspiration for these early works, though perhaps the rustic interiors of Le Nain are closer to the mark. The same old lady and young girl who figure in this composition appear in the Descent to the Cellar (Mus‚e des Beux-Arts et d'Arch‚ologie, Besan‡on), but the nearest analogy is to the slightly later Sleeping Spinner (also, Besan‡on) where the light source is more subtly suggested, as it is in this picture. The old crone in that picture is clearly the same model as that in the present painting although her headress is here unpinned. One would therefore date this painting to the early maturity of the artist, circa 1740.