JEAN-BAPTISTE HUET (1745 - 1811)

 
 
 
SHEPHERDS WITH THEIR FLOCK 
 
 
Signed with initials & dated l.l. 1768
Bears dry-stamp to mount l.r. (L.1042)
Pen and brown ink, brown wash, red chalk and red chalk wash, gouache 
& white chalk highlights on paper laid to an early mount [1]
32 x 41 cm | 12 3/5 x 16 1/10 in
 
 
PROVENANCE
At some point in the possession of François Renaud (active c.1800), likely just for mount-making;
'Aus Privatbesitz', Kunstversteigerungshaus Adolf Weinmüller, Munich, 20.05.1941, lot 448 
('Felsenlandschaft. 42:30,9. Rötel weiß gehöht. Signiert und datiert: Huet 1769. Sz. Fletcher Raincock, Liverpool, Lugt 1042') [estimated at 800 Reichsmarks] [2]
 
 
 
 
 
 
This outstanding early work by Huet is the pendant to one previously with Galerie Paul Prouté, Paris in 2013 (see fig. I below). Both sheets date from the same year as Huet's early masterpiece, Une Caravane, exhibited during the artist's debut at the Salon the following year and sold in 2012 for what remains the artist's record price at auction (see fig. II). [3] The composition of that painting echoes the two drawings', but more importantly was indebted to François Boucher's Return from the Market, which the artist knew before that work's exhibition alongside Une Caravane at the Salon. It should also be noted that there is something of Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione in the dramatic colouring and the composition. 
 
 
 
Huet was the son of an armorial painter in the king's household who spent his childhood among the artists lodged in the Louvre; it was there that the young man (who had studied briefly with Dagomer, a minor animalier) would have first met François Boucher and Jean-Baptiste Le Prince, the talented pupil of Boucher who became Huet's master in 1764. Something of a prodigy, Huet was accepted into the Academy in July 1768, and was elected to full membership the following year as a painter of genre scenes with Mastiff Attacking Geese (Musée du Louvre, Paris), one of the most spirited animal paintings of the time, much in the manner of Oudry. Huet's remarkable arrival on the Parisian art scene cemented his reputation as Boucher's successor, at least insofar as a painter of pastoral scenes.