Louis de BOULLOGNE, known as Boullogne le Jeune (Paris, 1654 - Lot 50

Louis de BOULLOGNE, known as Boullogne le Jeune (Paris, 1654-1733) and his workshop Apollo and Daphne Canvas. Circa 1685. 115 x 148 cm. In a gilded wood frame. Related works : - Apollo and Daphne, preparatory drawing for our composition. Grenoble Museum. Some variations: Love in the air will pass from right to left in our painting. The nymph in the woods on the right will become a River God. The nymph and putto on the left will be removed and replaced by two putti in the center. - Apollo and Daphne, circular drawing. Louvre, Département des Arts graphiques (inv. 24 901). Probably a more basic initial idea for the central group (inverted composition). - Two other related drawings (Galerie Patrick Perrin, 1990, and private collection). - Apollo and Daphne, oil on canvas, 119 x 147 cm. Etude Coutau-Bégarie, November 28, 2018, no. 150. A few variants: a nymph has been added here on the left; Apollo and the nymph from behind in the center are clothed, but unclothed on our painting. - Apollo and Daphne, oil on canvas falsely attributed to Bon Boullogne, 58 x 69 cm. Etude de Baecque, Lyon, June 19, 2010, no. 8. Studio copy of our painting. This work was given to Louis de Boullogne - with the participation of a member of the workshop, perhaps Bon Boullogne - and dated around 1685 by M. François Marandet, a specialist in the Boullogne dynasty. Mr. Marandet's study is available on request. Louis de Boullogne was one of the most important painters of the second half of the reign of Louis XIV and of the Regency. His social rise was spectacular. He was born into a family of painters. His father was one of the founders of the Académie Royale in 1648. His elder brother, Bon Boullogne, and his two sisters held the brushes. In 1773, Louis was awarded the Grand Prix of the Académie and left the following year for Rome, where his brother had preceded him. Returning to Paris in 1679, he obtained commissions for Versailles, and was subsequently admitted to the Académie. Success followed success. Louis de Boullogne worked for the King at the Trianon, for the Condé family at Chantilly and for the Count of Toulouse at the Château de Rambouillet. He painted Mays for Notre-Dame, and helped decorate the chapel at Versailles and the church at Les Invalides. He exhibited numerous paintings at the Salon de l'Académie, becoming rector and then director in 1722. Knighted in the Order of Saint-Michel, he was ennobled in 1724, then appointed Premier Peintre du Roi (First Painter to the King). On his death, he left "considerable property" and his eldest son became Controller General of Finances. François Marandet dates our painting to around 1685, a few years after Louis de Boullogne's return to Paris, where he lived and worked closely with his brother for several years. The existence of several preparatory drawings, as well as the appearance in 2018 of a version with notable variants, shows that our composition was abundantly worked on and that it was part of a broad demand for mythological subjects addressed to the Boullogne's flourishing workshop. While "remarkable passages" (Marandet) attest to Louis' hand, stylistic differences show that he enlisted the help of a member of the workshop. "A "discreet collaboration" by Bon Boullogne "is not without meaning" (idem). If we think today of Bernini's famous sculpted group, it was clearly a painting by Carlo Maratta in the King's collection, Apollo in pursuit of Daphne (sent to the Brussels Museum in 1802), that inspired Louis de Boullogne's composition. The theme, taken from Ovid's Metamorphoses, was particularly popular. The perfidious Cupid had given Apollo a golden arrow to inspire love, and the nymph Daphne a lead arrow to repel him. The god then pursued Daphne in a mad race, and she, exhausted, implored the help of her father, the river-god Peneus (visible in the foreground of our painting), who transformed her into a laurel tree. Thus transformed into a tree, she embodied the triumph of Chastity over Love!