Thursday, April 11, 2019

Pierre Subleyras (1699-1749) - Paris and Rome

Pierre Subleyras
Diana and Endymion
1740
oil on canvas
National Gallery, London

Pierre Subleyras
Modello for Crucifixion of St Peter
ca. 1740
oil on canvas
National Galleries of Scotland

Pierre Subleyras
Crucifixion of St Peter
ca. 1740
oil on canvas
Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig

Pierre Subleyras
Figure of Justice
before 1749
oil on canvas
Musée Thomas-Henry, Cherbourg

Pierre Subleyras
Charon Ferrying the Shades
ca. 1735-40
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

"Born in Uzès in Languedoc in 1699, Pierre Subleyras was a student of his father Mathieu, an artist of no distinction, and of the painter Antoine Rivalz.  After 1723 he was in Paris, where he soon won fame and the Prix de Rome.  From 1728 until the end of his life in 1749 he was active entirely in Italy, to which he felt additionally bound by having married a Roman wife.  Through the example of his sensitive, carefully shaded art, deliberate in regard to economy and simplification of means, Subleyras must be judged to have been of considerable importance in the development of classicizing taste.  The celebrated masters of French painting under Louis XIV and his successor – artists such as Charles Le Brun, J.-F. de Troy, and Charles-Joseph Natoire – were unable, despite the respected status assumed by the French Academy in Rome, to exert any strong influence on Italian painters.  The monumental school of Italian painting, in particular, took little notice of their artistic aspirations.  The "ingenious" element in their works had as little appeal to Italian taste as did the element of the galante and social conviviality in the French interpretation of noble subject matter and the almost miniature-like slickness and meticulous polish of their painting technique.  Subleyras was able to adapt himself to the Roman tradition in a far more organic manner than were his French compatriots.  He retained from his French training a precision and finesse of drawing technique as well as a somewhat affected nobility in the poses and gestures of his figures; but he also understood how to infuse his compositions with a quality of radiant quietude and grandeur which, however un-Italian it might be in its formal language, could have been developed only on Roman soil.  It is revealing that the artist refused a prestigious and advantageous summons to return to his native land in order not to have to leave Rome."

– Hermann Voss, from Baroque Painting in Rome (1925), revised and translated by Thomas Pelzel (San Francisco: Alan Wofsy, 1997)

Pierre Subleyras
Portrait of Pope Benedict XIV
1746
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Pierre Subleyras
Portrait of Giovanna Bagnara
ca. 1739
oil on canvas
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

Pierre Subleyras
Portrait of Horatio Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford
ca. 1746
oil on canvas
Temple Newsam House, Leeds

Pierre Subleyras
Portrait of a Gentleman
ca. 1745
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Pierre Subleyras
Portrait of Frederick Christian of Saxony
1739
oil on canvas
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

Pierre Subleyras
San Juan de Àvila
1746
oil on canvas
Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (West Midlands)

Pierre Subleyras
La Courtisane Amoureuse 
(illustration to La Fontaine)
ca. 1735
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Pierre Subleyras
The Duke of Saint-Aignan investing Girolamo Vaini, Prince of Cantalupe & Duke of Selci
with the insignia of a Knight of the Holy Spirit
1737
oil on canvas
private collection

Pierre Subleyras
Modello for Embarkation of St Paula for the Holy Land
ca. 1738-39
oil on canvas
Hatton Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne

Pierre Subleyras
Académie
before 1749
oil on canvas
Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, County Durham