RCEWA Case Xx
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Case 23 2013/14: a Portrait of Everhard Jabach and his Family by Charles Le Brun Expert adviser’s statement Reviewing Committee Secretary’s note: Please note that any illustrations referred to have not been reproduced on the Arts Council England Website Charles Le Brun (1619-1690) Portrait of Everhard Jabach, his wife Anne-Marie née de Groote and their children, Anna Maria, Hélène, Everhard the Younger and Heinrich, with a portrait of the artist in the background 1659-60 (?) Oil on canvas, 92 x 128 in. (233.5 x 325 cm.) Condition: Good. The painting has been folded horizontally about one-sixth of the way down from the top with some associated paint loss, but apart from that has not suffered major damage. Provenance With the sitter and his wife; 1778 passed by inheritance to Johann Matthias von Bors; 1791 sold via Franz Wallraf to Christian von Mechel, Basel, printmaker and art dealer; 1792 purchased by Henry W. Hope (1735-1811) for 10,000 thalers and displayed at his palace at Welgeleegen, Haarlem and then at Harley Street London; Christie’s London 27 June 1816 (lot 90); bought by George Watson Taylor (1771- 1841) for £48.6; at Taylor’s sale 24 July, 1832 (lot 93), Robins, Devizes; John Samuel Wanley Sawbridge Erle-Drax (1800-1887), M.P. at Olantigh Towers, Kent; by descent to his nephew Wanley Ellis Sawbridge Erle-Drax (d. 1927); 1912 let with Olantigh Towers to James Hope Loudon, O.B.E. (b. 1868); Francis William Hope (d. 1985), by whom acquired with Olantigh House in 1935; by descent to the present owner. Bibliography Edmond Malone, The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, London, 1797, vol. 2, p. 113; L. Dussieux, E. Soulié, Ph. de Chennevières, P. Mantz, A. de Montaiglon, Mémoires Inédits sur la Vie et les Ouvrages des Membres de l’Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, Paris, 1854, vol. 1, p. 8; J. J. Merlo, Die Familie Jabach zu Köln und ihre Kunstliebe, Köln, 1861, p. 37-58; Wilhelm Baumeister, “Zur Geschichte des Lebrunschen Jabachbildes,” Wallraf- Richartz Jahrbuch, vols. 3-4, 1926/1927, p. 211-221; Otto H. Förster, Kölner Kunstsammler vom Mittelalter bis zum Ende des Bürgerlichen Zeitalters, Berlin, 1931, p. 50-51; Anthony Blunt, “The Early Work of Charles Le Brun – II,” The Burlington Magazine, vol. 85, no. 497 (January-December 1944) p. 193-194; Fritz Grossmann, “Holbein, Flemish paintings and Everhard Jabach,” The Burlington Magazine vol. 93, no. 574 (January 1951), p. 16-25 at p. 19 and n. 53; Von Horst Vey, “Die Bildnisee Everhard Jabachs,” Wallraf-Richartz Jahrbuch, vol. 29, 1967, p. 168-172; Christopher Hussey, “Olantigh, Near Wye, Kent – III,” Country Life, vol. 146, no. 3779, p. 336; Antoine Schnapper, Curieux du Grand Siècle: Collections et Collectionneurs dans la France du XVIIe Siècle, Paris, 1994, p. 277; Harry Mount, ed. Sir Joshua Reynolds: A Journey to Flanders and Holland, Cambridge, 1996, p. 139-140, p. 142 fig. 79, p. 181; Emmanuel Coquery, “Le Portrait Français de 1660 à 1715,” in exhib. cat. Visages du Grand Siècle: le Portrait Français sous le Règne de Louis XIV 1660-1715, held at Musée des Beaux-Arts Nantes and Musée des Augustins Toulouse, 1997-1998, p. 57 and ill. on p. 59; Bernadette Py, Everhard Jabach Collectionneur (1618-1695), Paris, 2001, p. 11, 20; Lorenzo Pericolo ed., Vie de Charles Le Brun et Description Détaillée des ses Ouvrages, Geneva, 2004, p. 240; Bénédicte Gady, L’Ascension de Charles Le Brun: Liens Sociaux et Production Artistique, Paris, 2010, p. 230-231, 462; Clare Baron, A Pedagogical Model of Patronage: Education, Imitation and the Role of Copies in the Collection of Everhard Jabach 1618-1695, M.A. dissertation, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, 2012. Waverley Two – the painting is of outstanding aesthetic importance This monumental, recently rediscovered, work is a masterpiece of group portraiture. It depicts the banker and collector, Everhard Jabach (1618-1695), his wife Anne-Marie de Groote (d. 1701), whom he married in 1648, and four of their children: Marie- Anne (b. 1649), Hélène (b. October 1654), Everhard (b. September 1656) and Henri (b. 1658?). Reflected in a mirror is a self-portrait of Le Brun who was, according to his biographer Nivelon, “uni d’amitié et d’inclination avec le sieur Jabach”. The youngest daughter, Anne-Catherine, born and deceased in 1661, is not shown. Another version of the work was seen by Sir Joshua Reynolds in Cologne in 1781. This was the version given by Jabach to his brother-in-law, Heinrich de Groote, which was destroyed in 1945 in the Kaiser-Friedrich Museum, Berlin. The main difference between the two – to judge from a photograph of the destroyed version – is that the latter showed the bust of Minerva in profile looking in the direction of the family. Jabach was born in Cologne. In 1636 he inherited his father’s successful banking business and thereby the means to enrich the latter’s art collection. Lugt called Jabach the greatest seventeenth-century private collector of drawings, but he also bought paintings by artists such as Leonardo, Holbein, Correggio, Titian, Caravaggio and Reni. Prior to making these purchases Jabach was in England (1636-37) where he commissioned portraits of himself by Van Dyck. In 1638 he settled in Paris, became Cardinal Mazarin’s banker in 1642 and a French citizen in 1647. In 1659 he bought and enlarged a hôtel privé in the rue Neuve-Saint-Médéric (now rue Saint-Merri), Paris and there displayed his collection of paintings, drawings and sculptures. The present portrait was possibly commissioned to hang in this newly acquired hôtel. If so, this would suggest a date for it of 1659-60 which would be consistent with the apparent ages of the children. The family group is shown in a lavish interior furnished with an oriental carpet and landscape paintings. At top right is a relief of a lion attacking a horse based on a fragmentary sculpture now in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome. At bottom left is a collection of objects (perhaps Jabach’s own), which includes a celestial globe supported by a turned oak stand, chalk and a chalk holder, dividers and a rule, a closed Bible, an open geometry book, a marble head of Vitruvius (?) and, most prominently, a gilt (bronze?) bust of Minerva. Positioned strategically between the Minerva bust and Jabach is Le Brun’s self-portrait reflected in a mirror. Its inclusion refers to the close relationship between patron and painter, and can also be seen as a formal expression of his being part of the circle of erudition represented by Jabach, the Minerva bust and the other symbols of learning. Jabach’s sober black costume is offset by the (mainly) primary colours of the costumes of his family. At the extreme right Marie-Anne wears a blue bead necklace and blue ribbons and a golden-coloured veil – in contrast to the black veil of her mother. Her flowered dress was perhaps intended to suggest adolescence. The reds of her dress are picked up in the cushion on which Henri is seated, in the ribbons in Hélène’s hair and in the tunic of Everhard’s elder son. To the play of colour is added a play of straight lines and curves: the globe is next to a stone cube supporting the pedestal of the Minerva bust, the folds of the curtain at the left contrast with the fluting of the engaged pilaster at the right, and a curved picture frame is juxtaposed with a rectangular one. The precise ordering of the composition is further evidenced by the angle of projection of the pedestal at bottom right which is at right angles with the corner of the carpeted step. This careful geometry is disguised by the rolled carpet. The positioning of the protagonists’ heads are just as carefully ordered. That of Jabach is at an apex of imaginary lines which run through the heads of Le Brun and Minerva at left, and at right through the heads of the young Everhard, Anne-Marie and Marie- Anne. Another imaginary line descends from Marie-Anne’s head to those of the infant Henri and Hélène and then through Jabach’s hands gesturing towards the Bible and the bust of Minerva. Hence Le Brun enhances the painting’s meaning by creating a compositional link between learning and the members of the Jabach family. Other elements of the painting combine composition and iconography. The division of the floor between a carpeted area and an area of marble is suggestive of a gender divide. The young Everhard, who seems to have climbed on to the back of his parents’ chairs, is poised between them. He is also poised between the pursuits of childhood (the pet dog and a toy horse) and those of adulthood (the sources of learning), and between the protection of his parents and the infinite possibilities suggested by the celestial globe - to which his mother also looks but without the assured confidence of her husband. At the right Marie-Anne, on account of her age likely to be the first to leave the family home, looks beyond the picture space. The depiction of affective relationships in informal, dynamic poses in 17th-century group family portraits was a practice of Northern artists. Examples of family portraits by, or then attributed to, both Rubens and Van Dyck were in Mazarin’s collection, including the portrait after Rubens of the family of Sir Balthasar Gerbier (Windsor Castle). He, like Jabach, was an art agent. Many years later Jabach claimed that the paintings he saw during his trip to England remained fresh in his memory.