The Value of “Provenance”
Catalogue d’une belle Collection de Tableaux, et Bustes en marbre. Dont la majeure partie provient du célèbre Cabinet de…vendue le 22, & jours suivans. Par F.C. Joullain fils.
36 pp. 8vo, late 19th-century green morocco-backed marbled boards (extremities a little worn), title on spine. Paris: Joullain, 1775.
A rare sale catalogue describing an impressive group of paintings. Lassay (1652-1738), known as the “Don Juan du Grand Siècle” due to his dissipated personal life, was a man of letters and supporter of the libertines. His son, Léon de Madaillan, the comte de Lassay (1683-1750), commissioned the construction of the Hôtel de Lassay, now the residence of the president of the Assemblée nationale. Charlotte Guichard has written that unscrupulous experts continued to employ the Lassay family name to promote sales decades after their deaths, even when little to nothing in the sale had actually belonged to them.
This catalogue details 84 lots, all but one are paintings. The paintings include the work of Parmigianino, Albani, Caravaggio, Castiglione, A. Locatelli, J. Brueghel, Bril, Teniers, Jordaens, Rembrandt, F. Bol, Asselijn, Huysum, Callot, N. Poussin, Claude Le Lorrain, Le Nain, E. Le Sueur, Bourdon, B. Boullogne, J. Parrocel, Le Moine, Lancret, etc.
Nice wide-margined copy. Foxing to final few leaves. As usual, not bound with the supplement of 12 pages. Engraved bookplate of [H]enry [Pannier] (1853-1935), the Parisian art dealer, and stamp of the Bibliothèque Heim on verso of title.
❧ Lugt 2413. Guichard, Les Amateurs d’Art à Paris au XVIIIe siècle (2008), p. 109.
Price: $1,950.00
Item ID: 6600
