Lot 84: Jean-Joseph Taillasson (Bordeaux 1745-1809 Paris)

Saint Mary Magdalene in the Desert signed and dated 'Taillasson. 1784.' (lower left) oil on canvas 81 1/8 x 763/4 in. (206.1 x 194.9 cm.) PROVENANCE L'Abb‚ de Pradine, chaplain to the Comtesse d'Arthois, 1785. Private collection, France. with Richard Feigen & Co., New York. LITERATURE Catalogues of the Paris Salon 1673-1881, compiled by H.W. Janson, New York and London, 1977, IV, Exhibition of 1785, p. 30, no. 111. J. Whiteley, catalogue of the exhibiton, Drawings by Contemporaries of Voltaire - Eighteenth century French drawings from the Print Room of the Ashmolean Museum, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 30 August-27 November 1994, p. 16, under no. 19. EXHIBITION Paris, Salon, 1785, no. 111, 'Une MagdalŠne dans le D‚sert. Ce Tableau de 7 pieds de haut, fur 6 pieds 8 pouces de large, appartient … M. l'Abb‚ de Pradine, Aum“nier de Madame Comtesse d'Arthois'. NOTES Taillasson was a pupil of Joseph-Marie Vien, whose studio he joined in 1764. After a sojourn in Rome, he settled in Paris and was admitted to the Acad‚mie in 1782. He exhibited regularly at the Salon between 1783 and 1806, much of his work characterised by large theatrical compositions and grandiloquent emotion, qualities much admired by the connoisseur Lebreton. Taillasson was primarily a painter but he also wrote several notable art historical books, among them the Observations sur quelques grands peintres (Paris, 1807). Two studies for the present picture are known, both executed in black chalk on paper. The first, showing some notable differences in the objects on the right side but otherwise homogenous, is in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (see J. Whiteley, op. cit., no. 19, illustrated). Another drawing, signed, is in a private collection, New York.