Nicolas Antoine TAUNAY - Lot 89

Nicolas Antoine TAUNAY (Paris 1755 - 1830) The Billiard Game Oak panel, prepared 52.5 x 71 cm Inscription on reverse A La pallette .../ malaine ptre rue ... Saint Germain / L'auxerrois ... / p de 26 ... Provenance : Collection Jacques Lehideux (this version, or its modello?), Paris, in 1927; Maurice Segoura, Paris. Exhibition: Salon de 1808, Paris, n° 572 "Salle de billard où figurent différents personnages". Bibliography: Bibliothèque nationale, Cabinet des Estampes, Collection Deloynes, t. 43, no. 1136; t. 44, no. 1144 (signed A.P.), no. 1148 ; Boutard, "Salon de 1808", N. VII, Journal des Débats November 13, 1808; A. d'Escragnolle Taunay, Documents sur la vie et les œuvres de Nicolas Antoine Taunay, Rio de Janeiro, 1912, p. 89 ; A. Girodie, Un peintre de fêtes galantes : J.-F Schall, Strasbourg, 1927, no. 17; O. Rodrigues, Taunay e a Escola Nacional de Bellas Artes, Rio de Janeiro 1929, p. 182 ; C. Lebrun Jouve, Nicolas Antoine Taunay, Paris, 2003, no. P.545, reproduced. E. Bréton, P. Zuber, Boilly, le peintre de la société parisienne de Louis XVI à Louis-Philippe, vol. I, Paris, 2019, p. 69, reproduced p.67, fig. 22. The scene takes place in a billiard room. Around the table, several players are gathered. In the background, three men are refused access. Another tries to enter the room through a half-open door, watched over by an attentive dog. The most remarkable element is the subtle interplay of light: it finely sculpts the silhouettes and highlights certain figures, bathed in light and placed at the heart of the composition. Our painting was exhibited at the Salon of 1808, where critic Jean-Baptiste-Bon Boutard wrote of it: "the scene perfectly conceived: the figures, still a little large for the author's pencils, but of good character and true movement [...] this small painting very pretty and of a piquant effect". He also emphasizes the moral significance of the scene, evoked by the statue of Victoire holding a purse, an element absent from Boilly's painting of the same subject, presented at the same Salon under number 53, and now in the Hermitage Museum (see E. Bréton, P. Zuber, Boilly, le peintre de la société parisienne de Louis XVI à Louis-Philippe, vol. I, Paris, 2019, p.67, reproduced). Our painting is distinguished by a more expressive composition, with a strong narrative and warm character, where light animates and structures the scene. Boilly's painting, on the other hand, brings men and women together in a more hushed, intimate interior, lit by a single skylight, offering a neoclassical rather than truly contemporary rendering. Billiards had become one of the most fashionable amusements under the Empire, and the Parisian craze for the game was on the rise, with the bourgeoisie and middle classes increasingly frequenting gaming halls and private circles in search of distraction. Before the Revolution, according to Vivant Denon, there were innumerable billiard halls in Paris, "academies" populated day and night by regulars. The rules were not those we know today, and the game combined chance and strategy. A modello is preserved in New York at the Metropolitan Museum (panel, 16.9 x 22 cm, see C. Lebrun Jouve, opus quoted above, n°P.546, reproduced). Taunay often produced modelli that he kept in his studio to propose different compositions to his clients. In the Gazette des Beaux-arts of 1860, Bürger exclaimed of the modello: "Ah que c'est français! Elegance, caprice, skill, taste; a lot of charm and a lot of spirit: you immediately feel you're in France". Our painting has a label on the reverse, describing the figures depicted: "At the end of the last century, this café was very popular with artists. David is depicted in a red coat; Girodet, preparing to play with his left hand; Gros, offering money to a figure seen from behind". The modello has a similar label dating from 1874. However, this identification of the figures remains hypothetical.