Sebastien BOURDON (Montpellier 1616 - Paris 1671)
The sacrifice of Noah at the exit of the Ark
Canvas.
Carved wooden frame, redecorated from the Louis XIV period (modified in its dimensions).
70 x 96,5 cm
Provenance: Marquis of Cholmondeley, London sale, Christie's, July 14, 1922, no. 38 (as Nicolas Poussin,
sold for 157 l. 10s).
The Marquis Cholmondeley's collection at Houghton Hall included masterpieces such as Portrait of a Lady with a Scarf
of a Lady with a Squirrel and a Starling by Hans Holbein the Younger, The White Duck by Jean-Baptiste
Oudry, and others by Hogarth, Gainsborough...
Bibliography: Geraldine Elisabeth Fowle, The biblical Paintings of Sebastien Bourdon, University of Michigan
Michigan, 1970 and Ann Arbor, 1995, catalog raisonné, p.24-25 ("It, too, appears to be a copy"). Jacques Thuillier,
Sébastien Bourdon, 1616-1671, Catalogue critique et chronologique de l'oeuvre complet, Réunion des musées
national, Montpellier, 2000, cited p.351 under n°218.I
Two replicas of this composition by Bourdon are known, in Moscow at the Pushkin museum (77 x 102 cm) and in
Arras, Musée des Beaux-Arts (171 x 227 cm), respectively: Jacques Thuillier, catalog of the exhibition Sébastien
Bourdon 1616-1671, Montpellier, Musée Fabre, 2000 and Strasbourg November 28, 2000-2001, p. 351, n°218 I and p. 352 and n°218-11. On our canvas, the slight variations in the clouds are those of the large version. It is probable that for this third version, the artist had help from a member of his workshop, as was the custom at the time
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