Antoine Caillat (1765)

Recently rediscovered and authenticated by Olivier d'Agay, the aviator’s great-nephew, their secret will soon be revealed.

As this portrait attests, Léonard Limosin was an enameler to great statesmen and kings, starting with French King, Francis I (r.1515-1547).

This is the only preparatory drawing for a work commissioned by the painter’s colleagues. It recalls the major artistic event of the time in France, the Salon.

Antoine Rabany’s sculpted primitive heads have been in the news for about a hundred years. This version is the last one listed by specialist Bruno Montpied.

Allegorical Figure of Fashion, a black pencil drawing with watercolor highlights dating to 1780, by French artist Antoine-Esprit Gibelin (1739-1813) was preempted by the Parisian institution for €6,500 under the hammer of Million at Drouot. Antoine-Esprit Gibelin famously painted the frescoes at the Ecole de Chirurgie.

The bronze statuette worth €2.37M is a version of a statue of the king on a horse which was in Rennes from 1726-93, when it was melted down to make canons. In a British aristocratic collection for years, it has now been acquired for the City of Rennes with the support of the State and the patronage of the Norac Group.

A statuette of L'Ecorché (The Skinned One) will soon join the Diana the Huntress and busts of Rousseau and Voltaire, the Parisian museum announced on Twitter. This is the first evidence of the collaboration between the great 18th-century sculptor and the no less famous bronzer Philippe Thomire.

The work of court portrait painter Alexis Simon Belle (1674-1734), together with a portrait of Madame Crozat by Joseph Aved, will join the collections of the Montpellier museum. The Toulouse native, Crozat built his colossal fortune due to the slave trade. In 1712, King Louis XIV conceded Louisiana to him.

Put up for sale by the owners of the Chateau de l’Herbaudière in Salles-sur-Mer on June 4 near La Rochelle, a red chalk drawing by Watteau went to a French collector for €390,600. The two lovers make up the central motif of “The Embarkation for Cythera.” The same sale saw a landscape by Le Sidaner go for €296,880.

In collaboration with the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Musée d’Orsay focuses on the year 1874 and the first exhibition of independent artists who were soon to be called “Impressionists”.