Charles LE BRUN (1619 1690)

La Jeunesse
Huile sur panneau de chêne, une planche 26,50 x 34,80 cm
Provenance:
- Anonymous sale; London, Phillips, 4 July 2000, n° 126 (as Johann Liss' entourage); - Chez Emmanuel Moatti, Paris, in 2002 (n° 5 of the catalogue)
Bibliography:
Bénédicte Gady, L'ascension de Charles Le Brun. Liens sociaux et productions artistique, Paris, 2010, p. 66, repr. pl. II Bénédicte Gady in cat. exp. Charles Le Brun (1619-1690), Musée du Louvre-Lens, Paris, 2016, p. 122, mentioned and repr. in the notice of n° 30
Engraving:
etching by Jean Humbelot with Philippe Huart, around 1639: "La Jeunesse", part of the Quatre âges de l'homme
Note:
With the help of Nivelon's testimony and prints preserved in public collections, several of Charles Le Brun's youth paintings could be identified and returned to their author. This is the case of the one we present, attributed for a while to Johann Liss' entourage, then to Juste d'Egmont before being returned to Charles Le Brun. It is a model for the second part of a suite of the Four Ages of Man, engraved and published by Philippe Huart, a complete series of which is kept in the British Museum and two plates are located in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. The letter of these prints does not specify any by the inventor and it is to Maxime Préaud that we owe it to Maxime Préaud to have first proposed the name of Charles Le Brun, having been able to identify one of his compositions subtly slipped into the top of the almanac represented on the wall of L'Âge viril1. Of the four painted compositions in this set, only the small panel representing L'Enfance recently reappeared² and the one we are presenting are known to this day. The Manly Age and La Veillesse, known by engraving, have yet to be identified.
1 M. Préaud, "L'Espoir de la France", in Mélanges en hommage à Pierre Rosenberg. Paintings and drawings in France and Italy, 17th-18th centuries, Paris, 2001, p. 378-382 2 See cat. exp. Lens, 2016, n° 30

This lot is being put up for sale as part of a judicial sale.
It will be auctioned and entered in the minutes of Mr. Matthieu Fournier, judicial auctioneer.
The legal fees in addition to the auctions are 14.40% inclusive of tax.