Pierre GOBERT (Fontainebleau 1662 - 1744 Paris)
Circa 1690-1710
Portrait of a lady, half-length and three-quarter length
Oil on canvas, 91.5 x 75.2 cm
PROVENANCE
- Private collection Lyon until March 2024
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Unpublished
THE WORK
The portrait of a lady that we are presenting is unpublished.
Given the similarity of the details of our model's face and lace with those of the Portrait of François III of Lorraine acquired in 2017 by the Château de Luneville museum, we cannot rule out the possibility that our subject was a member of the royal family of Lorraine. However, an execution at Versailles, where the artist is known to have painted a considerable number of portraits of eminent members of the court, most of them female, seems more likely.
All these factors, together with stylistic ones, suggest that our painting dates from the years 1690-1720.
THE ARTIST
Son of Jean Gobert, sculptor to the king established in Fontainebleau, Pierre Gobert specialized in portraiture at a very young age, most likely training with royal portrait painters. From 1682, he was chosen to paint the Duke of Burgundy aged a few weeks (lost), but his activity remains difficult to trace until 1701 when he presented himself before the Academy. Only four months later, the artist was received, having delivered the requested portraits of Louis II of Boullogne and Corneille Van Cleve (Versailles, inv. MV 5821 and 5837).
In his new capacity as academician, Gobert sent to the Salon of 1704 no less than seventeen portraits, including his two reception pieces and, supreme honor, that of the Duke of Brittany (elder brother of the future Louis XV) placed "under a rich green velvet canopy” on a platform next to the paintings of the king, the dauphin and the Duke of Burgundy by Hyacinthe Rigaud. As for the other paintings presented by Gobert, they were – with the exception of the portrait of the artist's wife – revealing of his clientele composed exclusively of the most eminent members of the court and predominantly female.
From then on, the portrait painter's career was punctuated by royal and prestigious commissions, most of them coming from the House of France. In 1714, he signed a portrait of the future Louis XV intended for the Spanish court. From the following year and until at least 1733, the artist was also regularly employed by the ruling family of Monaco. In 1725, the artist went to Wissembourg where the Polish court in exile resided to paint Princess Marie Leszczinska. The following year, that of his appointment as advisor to the Academy, he was paid 2,700 pounds for three portraits of the queen, including the one “full length decorated with all her attributes”. Later, it was the turn of Louis XV's daughters to pose for Gobert.
It is certainly his glory as a painter of “women and children” which earned our artist the invitation to Lorraine. A Memoir of the painting works done by the undersigned by order of Their Royal Highnesses fortunately preserved lists the portraits made by the artist between September 1707 and March 1709. We discover there that he had to repeat in ten copies each of the portraits of Duke Leopold , of Élisabeth-Charlotte and their four daughters, but also paint the duke's two brothers, "Her Royal Highness Madame with Monsignor the Prince" (Nancy, Lorrain museum, inv. 77.2.13) and make "the original portrait of monseigneur le petit prince” (Versailles, inv. 4433). In 1710, it was Louis de Lorraine, born in 1704 and died of smallpox in May 1711. Gobert represented him blowing soap bubbles and wearing a green velvet dress with gold braid, because the heir had not yet reached the age of “passing to men”, set at four years in Lorraine as in France.
The portraitist left the duchy with the title of ordinary painter to Duke Leopold. However, only one other trip by Gobert is documented: on December 5, 1721, he gave Nancy a receipt for the sum of two thousand livres "taking into account the price of the portraits of the Royal house made by him in Lunéville", the surplus to be paid in Paris. From this stay date the two portraits of Léopold Clément (1707-1723), promised to the succession after the death of Louis: the first dating from around 1720 (Versailles, inv. MV 3734, engraved by Jean-François des Cars) and the second made in 1721, date on which the prince received the Golden Fleece (Versailles, inv. 3738, engraved by Duflos). Numerous portraits attest to the Parisian portraitist's continuing relations with Lorraine: Gobert had to travel quite regularly to Nancy and Lunéville to notably paint the children of the ducal couple.
PHOTOGRAPHS' DETAILS
