JEAN-PIERRE PEQUIGNOT (1765-1807)

AN ALLEGORY WITH CLASSICAL FEMALE FIGURES, POSSIBLY SIBYLLS OR VESTALS
Bears inscription to mount Dessinée à la plume par Pequignot
Pen & brown ink 
16.7 x 37.5 cm
 
 
 
 
The present drawing is one of a surprisingly small number of extant works on paper by Pequignot, which number even fewer than the artist's fully attributed landscape paintings. 
 
Jean-Pierre Pequignot first studied with Johann Melchior Wyrsch, the founder of the painting and sculpture academy at Besançon, between 1775 and 1780. He then went to Paris where he worked in the studio of Claude-Joseph Vernet and was also accepted in the studio of Jacques-Louis David. Pequignot later travelled to Rome where he met Anne-Louis Girodet (1767-1824), the winner of the Grand Prix de Rome in 1789, who arrived there in May 1790. Both artists came from the Franche-Comté and became close friends. Girodet's growing interest in landscape painting might have been influenced by Pequignot. 
 
In 1791, the two fled from the turmoil of the Revolution and the resulting persecution of French citizens to Naples where they worked together in the surrounding countryside. They collaborated to such an extent that Pequignot painted the entire landscape in Girodet's Sleep of Endymion (1791), a work that met with great success at the Salon the following year (and is now in the Louvre, Paris). After Girodet left for Paris in 1794, Pequignot remained in Naples until his death in 1807, drawing much inspiration from the surrounding countryside and local architecture for his sun-filled neoclassical landscape paintings.