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Lot Essay
Called "the earliest practitioner of the full-blooded 'Baroque' style of flower painting", Baudesson enjoyed a considerable reputation in his own lifetime (see C. Wright, Masterpieces of reality: French 17th Century painting, exh. catalogue, Leicester, 1985, p. 45). Born in Troyes, Baudesson was the son of an artisan who worked for the chancelier Séguier at château Saint-Liébaut. Thanks to Séguier's financial support, Baudesson was able to travel to Italy in the mid-1630s, where according to Florent le Comte he studied with the most celebrated painter of flower-pieces in Italy of the day, Mario Nuzzi, called Mario dei Fiori (see M. Faré, La grand siècle de la nature morte en France, le XVIIe siècle , Fribourg and Paris, 1976, p. 280). Returning to France in 1666, Baudesson was elected a member of the Académie in 1671 and two years later displayed two large still-life paintings in the Salon of 1673. Upon his death in 1680, the Mercure Galant described his passing as a loss to both Italy and France, noting that Louis XIV had a number of his works in his collection at Versailles. Contemporary art historian André Félibien celebrated Baudesson in his memoirs, praising him for achieving the same success with flower paintings that other artists did with the more traditionally revered subjects of history painting and portraiture (A. Félibien, Entretiens sur la vie et les ouvrages des plus excellents peintres anciens et modernes, Paris, 1666-1668, II, p. 293 and Faré, op. cit., pp. 277, 284).
In this work, Baudesson depicted flowers with large blooms such as chrysanthemums and carnations against a simple dark background. In complementary tones of blue, red and white, the flowers sit in classical-style vase adorned with a fluted base, rounded handles and sculpted faces. The vase rests on a stone ledge naturalistically rendered with an uneven edge parallel to the picture plane. The basic compositional format of flowers in a vase on a ledge owes a debt to predecessors in the Netherlands, while the sumptuousness of the image reflects Baudesson's awareness of his contemporaries working in Antwerp, such as Jan Davidsz. de Heem. In contrast to Dutch and Flemish trends, however, Baudesson was less focused on capturing the minute details and botanical specificity of individual blooms. Rather, this picture shows a tonal harmony and unifying rhythms of light and shade that produce a cohesive, enchanting effect, qualities that made flower-painting fundamental to the extraordinary decorative schemes that flourished in late 17th- and 18th-century France.
In 1968, Galerie Cailleux, Paris, sold this painting as the work of Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer. It was definitively attributed to Baudesson by Michel Faré in 1974 text.
In this work, Baudesson depicted flowers with large blooms such as chrysanthemums and carnations against a simple dark background. In complementary tones of blue, red and white, the flowers sit in classical-style vase adorned with a fluted base, rounded handles and sculpted faces. The vase rests on a stone ledge naturalistically rendered with an uneven edge parallel to the picture plane. The basic compositional format of flowers in a vase on a ledge owes a debt to predecessors in the Netherlands, while the sumptuousness of the image reflects Baudesson's awareness of his contemporaries working in Antwerp, such as Jan Davidsz. de Heem. In contrast to Dutch and Flemish trends, however, Baudesson was less focused on capturing the minute details and botanical specificity of individual blooms. Rather, this picture shows a tonal harmony and unifying rhythms of light and shade that produce a cohesive, enchanting effect, qualities that made flower-painting fundamental to the extraordinary decorative schemes that flourished in late 17th- and 18th-century France.
In 1968, Galerie Cailleux, Paris, sold this painting as the work of Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer. It was definitively attributed to Baudesson by Michel Faré in 1974 text.