Lot 77: Maurice Quentin de La Tour (Saint-Quentin 1704-1788)

Portrait of Jean-Baptiste Philippe (1689-1768), half-length, holding a tricorn hat
pastel
25 x 21 in. (640 x 540 mm.)

Probably, Paris, Salon, 1761, part of no. 46.
Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, Exposition rétrospective de la Société des pastellistes français, 1885, no.85.
Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, Exposition de cent pastels du XVIIIe siècle et de bustes organisée par la marquise de Ganay au profit de la Société française de secours aux bléssés militaires, 1908, no.100.
Paris, Hôtel de la monnaie, Louis XV: un moment de perfection de l'art français, 1974, no. 574.
Versailles, Musée national du Château, Le voleur d'âmes. Maurice Quentin de La Tour, 2004, no. 20.

X. Salmon, Musée national du château de Versailles. Les pastels, Paris, 1997, pp. 108-09, fig. 6.
C. Debrie and X. Salmon, Maurice Quentin de La Tour, prince des pastellistes, Paris, 2000, pp. 156-60.

Georges Petit, Paris, before 1885; Paris, Drouot, 14-15 December 1927, lot 154.
Anonymous sale; Versailles, Palais des Congrès, 13-14 May 1970, lot 83 (to Heim).
with Heim Gairac, Paris, where acquired by the present owner in 1971.

Jean-Baptiste Philippe (1689-1768) was a rich fermier général, son of a secretary to Queen Marie-Thérèse, wife of Louis XIV. Philippe married Marguerite Ferry in 1711, and on her death married Geneviève de Vallembras de Sombreval whose portrait by Jean-Marc Nattier is in the Louvre. He lived in the Hôtel Nicolas de Jeussaud on the Quai de Bourbon and at his death left his daughter the considerable sum of 800,000 livres.
In common with his fellow successful fermiers général, Jean-Baptiste Philippe commissioned Quentin de La Tour to make his portrait in pastel. A first version was executed in 1748, when the sitter was 59 (see exhib. cat. Versailles, 2004, no. 21). The present work is an autograph repetition made shortly afterwards, and it was probably this version that remained in the artists's studio and was exhibited at the Salon of 1761, where it was sketched by Gabriel de Saint-Aubin on the margin of his copy of the Salon handlist now in the Bibliothèque nationale, Paris (E. Dacier, Catalogues de ventes et livrets de Salons illustrés par Gabriel de Saint-Aubin, V-VI, Paris, 1911, n.p.).