DROUOT
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Salle 12-13 - Hôtel Drouot - 9, rue Drouot 75009 Paris, France
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Lot 99 - Jean-François de Sompsois, c. 1775. MARIE-ANTOINETTE, QUEEN OF FRANCE. Very fine and rare portrait of the young sovereign, depicted from the waist up, as she becomes Queen of France, wearing a blue dress edged with ermine and embroidered with gold fleurs-de-lis, emblems of the monarchy. Pastel on paper, oval. Under glass. In excellent condition. Height 60.5 cm, width 49.2 cm (without frame); Height 90 cm, width 62 cm (with frame). Signed lower left: De Sompsois Louis XVI giltwood frame with knots and ribbons. 4 000 / 6 000 € By virtue of its date, 1775, and its technique, pastel, our portrait bears eloquent witness not only to the talent of Jean-François de Sompsois, who excelled in this art, but also to the artist's activity during a period about which little is known. Jean-François de Sompsois (1720-1808), a French painter and draughtsman of Helvetian origin, specialized in the pastel technique, and spent much of his career between Russia and Paris. Jacob von Stählin (1709-1785), professor at the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, first director of the Academy of Fine Arts, poet, medallist and engraver, describes Sompsois as a remarkable miniaturist and pastelist, who produced numerous portraits of members of the court and especially of the Russian Empress, notably on the snuffboxes she liked to give as gifts. Called to the Russian court to paint the portrait of Empress Elisabeth I, Sompsois is mentioned in St. Petersburg in the early 1750's. After returning to France, he returned to St. Petersburg in 1756. This time, he remained in Russia for six years. To sum up, Sompsois spent two periods in St. Petersburg. The first, around 1753-1755, and the second between 1755-1756 and 1763-1764. He is notably the author of a suite of eleven pastel portraits of Elisabeth Alexeyevna's ladies-in-waiting, painted from 1756 and now kept in the Chinese palace of Oranienbaum, near St. Petersburg. Surprising as it may seem, there is a gap in Sompsois's biography between 1764 and 1775, a period during which virtually nothing is known about the painter's life and activity other than that from 1775 his name, mentioned as follows: "de Sompsois, écuyer", appears in the list of eleven artists associated with the Académie de Saint-Luc. However, he never exhibited at the salons of this institution, which disappeared with the abolition of Parisian guilds in 1776. In 1778, de Sompsois was accepted as a master painter in The Hague, but refused to pay the entrance fees as a French nobleman. In Russian documents, a payment of 750 roubles - a considerable sum - is recorded in 1780 in favor of the painter. Several pastels dated between 1782 and 1791 attest to his presence in the Netherlands. He returned to Paris in 1788, where he became associated with the Comte de Paroy, enabling him to paint a pastel of Madame Royale (50 x 36 cm, private collection), whose drawing teacher he was during the same period. Cited in a 1797 document, a miniature of the Comte de Provence is the last known mention of Sompsois. Works by Sompsois are rare on the market, many of which are now held in museums, and those that could testify to the artist's career between 1765 and 1775 are, to the best of our knowledge, extremely rare if not impossible to find. This makes the pastel we are presenting today, which we can date from 1775, all the more exceptional in terms of its dating, subject and high quality of execution.

Estim. 4 000 - 6 000 EUR