Jean RAOUX (1677-1724) The toilet before the ball. Oil... Lot 13

Jean RAOUX (1677-1724) The toilet before the ball. Oil on canvas (lined). 98,7 x 138,5 cm. Restorations, repaints at the top of the composition and on the lower corners, wear. (A wooden case). Provenance: Galerie Didier Aaron, 2004. Pupil of Jean Ranc in Montpellier, then of Bon Boullogne in Paris, Jean Raoux was admitted to the Royal Academy in 1717 as a history painter with "Pygmalion and Galatea" (Montpellier, Musée Fabre). But it was his portraits, vestals and genre scenes that made his reputation. Raoux tackled the theme of the young woman with a mirror on several occasions, varying the formats and the number of figures. Let us quote the "Young girl with a mirror" (London, Wallace Collection), "Young woman with a mirror and her servant" (Catalogue of the exhibition Jean Raoux, a painter under the Regency. Montpellier, 2009-2010, p. 197, n° 32) and "Jeunes filles au miroir" (Ibid., p.197, n°35, repr.). The catalog of the Saint Sauveur sale, Paris, February 12, 1776, lot n° 44 mentions a pair of paintings: "In one a seated lady adjusts her bouquet in front of her toilet mirror, the chambermaid puts pearls on her head", further on: "they are on a contoured canvas (sic)". The repaints on the top and on the lower corners of our painting as well as the traces of a contoured frame at the bottom of the composition make the identification of this work with the one of the 1776 sale attractive; but the difference in size (86,6 x 150 cm) does not allow us to affirm it, we know moreover after his inventory after death that Raoux could repeat the compositions which had success. In her unfinished catalog (Louvre, service d'étude et de documentation), Célia Alégret suggests that the format and size of the half-figures of natural size meant that these paintings were intended to be door tops and that the subject could be interpreted as an allegory of the view. The sobriety of the composition and its lighting move us away from the simple genre scene