Description & Technical information

Pen and grey ink and grey wash, over an underdrawing in black chalk, with framing lines in brown ink.
Laid down on a 19th century mount.

Signed and dated 1767, the present sheet is a fine and charming example of the numerous genre scenes set in Russia that Jean-Baptiste Le Prince produced after his return to France. As Kimerly Rorschach has written of Le Prince, ‘the artist distilled his observations of Russia into a series of images which served him throughout his working life. Repeated in paintings, drawings, prints and tapestries, Le Prince’s images brought the exotic flavour of far-away Russia into the drawing rooms of many a fashionable Frenchman.’
 
A finished watercolour of a similar domestic subject of a Russian family in an interior, though different in composition, is in the Musée Départemental des Vosges in Epinal.
 

Date:  1767
Period:  1750-1850, 18th century
Origin:  France
Medium: Pen, Grey wash, Black chalk, Grey and brown ink
Signature: Signed and dated Le Prince 1767 at the lower left.

Dimensions: 18.2 x 23.9 cm (7¹/₈ x 9³/₈ inches)
Provenance: Possibly the posthumous vente Le Prince, Paris, Hôtel de Lubert, 28 November 1781 onwards
Galerie de Bayser Paris
Stiebel, Ltd., New York
Private collection.
 
Categories: Paintings, Drawings & Prints