ATTRIBUÉ À MICHEL-ANGE CHALLE Lot n° 33

Winged Glory & Warriors Conversing Pen and wash 21,5 x 15,5 cm PROVENANCE Stamped lower left from the collection of the Marquis Philippe de Chennevières (L. 2072), sold from April 4 to 7, 1900 and bought by Dr Tuffier; sold by Pierre de la Raudière on February 23, 1972 at the Hôtel Drouot; bought by his son Gilles-Eric at the public sale of February 23, 1972; then collection of La Raudière, Paris This drawing, formerly attributed to Carle Vanloo without being by him, has the particularity of combining the nervous sketch of a glory in the upper register and the bas-relief composition of a group of soldiers in the lower register. The two registers are separated by a pen stroke and by the treatment of their respective backgrounds - the wash-painted background of the Glory stops clearly at its separation. In this respect, this sheet could have been part of a studio collection intended to provide models of figures for compositional settings. From the collection of Philippe de Chennevières, director of the Beaux-Arts administration from 1873 to 1878, our drawing has a very complete and prestigious history that leaves little doubt as to its importance, although the expressive and nervous manner of the Gloire in the upper register may be surprising. We propose to give it back to Michelangelo Challe (1718-1778), draughtsman of the Chamber and Cabinet of King Louis XV, who proposed numerous projects for commissions in which the figures present in our sheet are clearly used, in particular and in an exemplary way in the Mausoleum for Louis, Dauphin de France (Fig. 1) erected in Notre-Dame de Paris in 1766, designed by Charles Michel Ange Challe, engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet and published the same year. Covering the triumphal arch of this famous pomp, we find the glory holding a laurel wreath (no longer two), the left hand free to make the link with the register of figures arranged below. These figures - an allegory of France and Death pointing his sickle at the royal coat of arms - correspond in their composition and attitudes (down to Death's veil, which replaces the soldier's animal skin) to the models that Challe most certainly drew up in his drawing books. Moreover, we find in his painted compositions this arrangement of a winged figure in oblique dialogue with a group of figures placed on the lower edge of the canvas. If L'Union des Arts de Peinture et de Sculpture par le Dessin (1753; Fig. 2) in the Château de Fontainebleau presents a figure of artistic genius whose physiognomy and anatomy are very close to those of our Glory, the Repas d'Emmaüs (Fig. 3) in the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (ca. 1759) shows a figure of a genius who is not a member of the family. Quebec (ca. 1759) shows a Christ whose slightly smiling anatomical profile is identical to that of the soldier covered in animal skin in the lower register of our drawing. Henry de Chennevières, Philippe's son, published in 1882 in the Gazette des Beaux-arts a study devoted to the artist: "Michel-Ange Challe, Draughtsman of the King's Cabinet, documents taken from an unpublished journal". Challe was also one of Philippe de Chennevières' preoccupations as a collector, with Louis-Antoine Prat's catalogue raisonné listing four mentions of this artist (La collection Chennevières: quatre siècles de dessins français: histoire des collections du musée du Louvre, Musée du Louvre éd., EnsBA, 2007). As Philippe de Chennevières built up part of his collection while he was studying in Aix-en-Provence, it is possible that this drawing was associated with the François Vanloo drawing in the present sale from the 1840s.