Lot 135: JEAN RESTOUT

JEAN RESTOUT ROUEN 1692 - 1768 PARIS TWO STUDIES OF THE HEAD OF A GIRL LOOKING DOWN Black chalk heightened with white chalk on blue paper 326 by 205 mm

These studies appear to be preparatory for the head of Eurydice in Restout's painting of 1763, Orpheus in the Underworld, in the Louvre (fig. 1).υ1 The scene, taken from Ovid's Metamorphosis, depicts Orpheus persuading Pluto by the beauty of his music to allow the beautiful Eurydice back to earth.

Christine Gouzi, in her monograph on Restout, notes that the artist often used the same model for female figures in his paintings, with the same distinctive round face with a pointed chin and half-closed, heavy eyelids that we see in the present sheet.υ2

1. See C. Gouzi, Jean Restout 1692-1768 peintre d'histoire à Paris, Paris 2000, pp. 135, 316-7, cat. no. P.191
2. Loc.cit, p. 342