Christophe HUËT (Pontoise 1700 - Paris 1759) Portrait... Lot 24

Christophe HUËT (Pontoise 1700 - Paris 1759) Portrait of Alzire, Voltaire's dog Canvas 65 x 81 cm Signed and dated center left on the tree C. Huët. 1739. Titled lower center ALZIRE Missing Provenance : Sale Eugène Féral, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 22 - 24 April 1901, (Me Chevallier), n° 37 ; Sale of Mister the Count of D..., Marseille, Hôtel des ventes des Commissaires - priseurs, November 7, 1916, n° 17, reproduced; Anonymous sale, Paris, Galerie Charpentier, 20 March 1959, n° 12, reproduced. We propose as a hypothesis to see in the represented animal, the dog that Mademoiselle Quinault offered to Voltaire in 1736. (see Œuvres complètes de Voltaire, tome 34, Paris, 1880, " Lettre 966 - 24 novembre 1738 ", Zamore et Alzire vous saluent à quatre pattes). Christophe Huët is best known for the Singeries du château de Chantilly. Painted between 1735 and 1737, this decoration is considered to be the artist's masterpiece and one of the most beautiful decorations in France in the first half of the 18th century. His life and work are still largely unknown, especially as regards his early works. He is credited with the animal decoration of a harpsichord made for the castle of Thoiry in 1733. Received at the Academy of Saint Luc in 1734, Christophe Huët participated in the Salons organized by the latter in 1751, 1752 and 1756. Son of the painter and goldsmith Christophe I Huët, he was probably influenced by the two great animal painters of the time, François Desportes and Jean-Baptiste Oudry. This filiation seems obvious when he takes up the scheme of the portraits of the royal dogs elaborated by these artists. In 1728, Un épagneul saisissant un canard dans un étang, (anonymous sale, New York, Christie's, January 23, 2004, n° 2, reproduced) clearly repeats a composition by Oudry painted the same year, Un chien barbet saisissant une cane dans les roseaux (New York, private collection), Our painting is in the same vein of inspiration. Huët even uses the inscription of the dog's name in gold letters on the portraits intended for the King, in yellow imitating the gold here. The museum of Nantes preserves Dog at the stop on partridges. The Musée de la Chasse in Paris has a pair of paintings of spaniels similar to our dog. Huët painted his animal portraits throughout his career. Several dog portraits date from the 1750s, and he worked on several occasions for the Marquise de Pompadour, for whom he painted, among other things, Portrait de Mimi, king-charles, engraved by Fessart, (anonymous sale, Paris Hôtel Drouot, April 3, 2019, no. 6, reproduced). A portrait of the white cat was exhibited in 1997, at the Pavillon des antiquaires in Paris. The dog Alzire and her brother Zamore were offered by Mademoiselle Quinault to Voltaire, to whom she had great ties of friendship, in 1736. As long as he could stay in Paris, Voltaire frequented her literary Salon. Jeanne Françoise Quinault - Dufresne, known as Mademoiselle Quinault (1699 - 1783), came from a dynasty of actors at the Comédie Française where she herself made her debut in 1718. From the winter of 1731 - 1732, she gathered seven of her friends at her home for lazzi, fine dinners followed by theater and games. She continued with her literary Salon La Société du bout du banc, one of the most brilliant of the time where the great minds of the time met: The Duke of Orleans, Maurepas, d'Alembert, Diderot, Rousseau, Grimm, Marivaux... and Voltaire. It is his brother Abraham - Alexis, known as Quinault - Dufresne who created the role of Zamore in the play Alzire in 1736. In 1734, Voltaire had been forced to leave Paris following a threat of imprisonment after the publication of the Philosophical Letters without his knowledge. Between 1734 and 1749, he lived with his friend, the woman of letters and figure of the Enlightenment, Emilie du Châtelet, at the castle of Cirey - sur - Blaise (Haute Marne). The name of Alzire, like that of Zamore, was inspired to Voltaire by his tragedy.