.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
The young woman depicted in this portrait is Susanna Lewis (1728-1804), daughter of John Lewis of Hackney (1705-1746), who appears to have made a fortune in trade. Susanna, co-heir with her sister of her father’s fortune, was nine years old when her mother died and only eighteen when also he passed away, and must have spent part of her youth in the care of a guardian. When Liotard made the present portrait in 1753 or 1754, Susanna was twenty-six and still unmarried; in 1761, she would marry Colonel John Campbell. The identity of the sitter is revealed by handwritten inscriptions on the back of the pastel’s original frame, as well as by the caption of a mezzotint, dated 1754 and made by James MacArdell, which reproduces Liotard’s pastel and names the sitter in its fifth and sixth states (fig. 1).
After having travelled extensively throughout Europe and spent five years in Constantinople (1738-1742), Liotard arrived in London in 1753. By then he was an artist of international reputation, having created portraits for patrons in all the main European capitals, including Vienna, Paris, Dresden, Geneva, and Rome. As attested by a contemporary newspaper, the artist’s arrival in London was quickly noticed by British society, not in the least because of his appearance: ‘This week a Turkish Gentleman, lately arrived here, who is very eminent in Portrait Painting, and known to Sir Everard Faulkner in Turky, was introduced to his Royal Highness the Duke of Cumberland, and graciously received. This gentleman is dressed in the Habit of his Country, and remarkable by his Beard being long, curiously sharped and curled’ (Old England’s Journal, 31 March 1753, quoted in N. Jeffares, ‘Liotard and the Medium of Pastel’, in Jean-Etienne Liotard 1702-1789, exhib. cat., Edinburgh, Scottish National Gallery, and London, Royal Academy of Arts, 2015, p. 29). In London, Liotard encountered an immediate social success: British patrons were captivated by his work and his persona, so much so that the artist was constantly sought out by noble patrons, including members of the Royal family, and for his works he could ask what contemporaries described as ‘extravagant’ prices (see W. Hauptman, ‘Continental Royal and Society Portraits’, in exhib. cat., Edinburgh and London, op. cit., 2015, p. 130).
Although Liotard was accomplished also in other techniques, he had made of pastel his chosen medium and in 1761 explained: ‘for its beauty, vivacity, freshness and lightness of palette, pastel painting is more beautiful than any other kind of painting’ (quoted in English in Jeffares, op. cit., 2015, p. 27). Yet in contrast with the success he gained among patrons, contemporary artists and art critics resisted the lure of Liotard’s work. Not only was portraiture considered a more commercial enterprise than history painting, but also Liotard’s unconventional compositions, the choice of stark flat backgrounds, and his use of bold and contrasting colors were all transgressions to the well-established traditions of the genre. The painter’s painstaking pursuit of truthfulness, rather than grace, made him famous for the honesty of his portraits - he was called the ‘painter of the truth’ - but also made some of his contemporaries uneasy.
In his London lodgings in Golden Square, Liotard had set up a gallery in which he displayed a rotating selection of his works for perspective clients. As first noted by Francis Russell when this pastel emerged on the art market in 1995, for the portrait of Susanna Lewis, Liotard went back to a composition of a few years earlier. In 1746, in Lyon, he made a portrait of the twenty-nine year old (and still unmarried) Marianne Lavergne (1717-1790), daughter of his sister Sara Liotard and of the merchant François Lavergne, now in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (fig. 2; inv. SK-A-228; see Roethlisberger and Loche, op. cit., no. 159, ill.; and Jeffares, op. cit., online edition, no. J.49.1765). The portrait of Mademoiselle Lavergne was conceived as a genre scene, and became known as La Liseuse. The sitter is portrayed seated in a rustic wooden chair against an empty background, her eyes lowered, almost closed, at the letter she holds in her hands. She is wearing the traditional dress of a peasant woman from the region of Lyon, depicted meticulously by Liotard; she wears a red ribbon in her hair and a small cross simply tied to her neck. The success of the composition of La Liseuse can be measured by the autograph versions known of the composition; the recent catalogue raisonné by Marcel Roethlisberger and Renée Loche records seven (op. cit., nos. 159-160, nos. 213-214, nos. 292-294, ill.). After his stay in Lyon, Liotard brought the prime version with him to Paris and used it extensively to advertise his skills as a portraitist. He presented it at Versailles and exhibited it in Paris at the Académie de Saint-Luc in 1751, and most likely the artist took it also with him in London.
In adapting the composition of La Liseuse for the portrait of Miss Lewis, Liotard made some notable changes. While the sitters are depicted on the same scale, the size of the support - in both cases vellum, which Liotard preferred to paper - is larger in the present version (the Amsterdam version measures 21 ½ by 17 inches), widening the plain brown background around the sitter. Susanna’s head is slenderer than Marianne’s and her neck longer, and her eyes are unmistakably open and no longer lowered. Indeed, Susanna appears interrupted in her reading and calmly gazes out towards the viewer. Her elegant costume, which certainly would have appeared unusual in a British context, is again rendered with exquisite precision, revealing Liotard’s almost obsessive fascination in depicting fabrics and textures, which he believed added interest and pleasure to a portrait. With great attention, he rendered the thick fabric of the corset, the nearly transparent silk of the shirt, and the glimmering quality of the skirt’s fabric. The red ribbon closing the corset is perhaps the most eye-catching element of the costume, while the two small pins pricked in it at left are easily missed. The latter detail was also used by Liotard in one of his largest works, known as the Lavergne family breakfast, dated 1754 and recently acquired by the National Gallery, London (fig. 3; inv. NG6685; see Roethlisberger and Loche, op. cit., no. 299, ill.; Jeffares, op. cit., online edition, no. J.49.1795, ill.).
While it is not exactly known who commissioned the portrait of Susanna Lewis, it can be assumed it was herself or a member of her family. She was twenty-six when the portrait was made, and still an unmarried heiress, and it has been suggested that the portrait might have been commissioned (and more widely disseminated by means of a number of contemporary prints after it) with the prospect of finding a husband for Susanna (Roethlisberger and Loche, op. cit., p. 460). She did not find a life companion until several years later, however. Neil Jeffares, to whom we are grateful for the rich and unpublished biographical documentation he provided regarding the portrait’s sitter and her family, has intriguingly suggested that the pastel could have been commissioned by Susanna’s aunt, Elisabeth Collyer (1714-1800). A well-known philanthropist, supporter of the scientist Joseph Priestley and follower of the Unitarian Rev. Theophilus Lindsey, she instructed in her will to leave to her niece, among other things, her ‘Snuff Box set with Precious Stones’ and also ‘the two Pictures of my Father and Mother now in my house in Titchfield-Street and all my Pictures of her own person if not given in my Lifetime.’ Unfortunately, it cannot be proven that Liotard’s pastel was one of those portraits, but the pastel was at some point owned by Susanna and her husband, and later passed to subsequent generations of the family, until it was sold at Christie’s in London in 1995. It survives in remarkable condition as a testament to Liotard’s excellence in his chosen medium and his originality as an artist.
After having travelled extensively throughout Europe and spent five years in Constantinople (1738-1742), Liotard arrived in London in 1753. By then he was an artist of international reputation, having created portraits for patrons in all the main European capitals, including Vienna, Paris, Dresden, Geneva, and Rome. As attested by a contemporary newspaper, the artist’s arrival in London was quickly noticed by British society, not in the least because of his appearance: ‘This week a Turkish Gentleman, lately arrived here, who is very eminent in Portrait Painting, and known to Sir Everard Faulkner in Turky, was introduced to his Royal Highness the Duke of Cumberland, and graciously received. This gentleman is dressed in the Habit of his Country, and remarkable by his Beard being long, curiously sharped and curled’ (Old England’s Journal, 31 March 1753, quoted in N. Jeffares, ‘Liotard and the Medium of Pastel’, in Jean-Etienne Liotard 1702-1789, exhib. cat., Edinburgh, Scottish National Gallery, and London, Royal Academy of Arts, 2015, p. 29). In London, Liotard encountered an immediate social success: British patrons were captivated by his work and his persona, so much so that the artist was constantly sought out by noble patrons, including members of the Royal family, and for his works he could ask what contemporaries described as ‘extravagant’ prices (see W. Hauptman, ‘Continental Royal and Society Portraits’, in exhib. cat., Edinburgh and London, op. cit., 2015, p. 130).
Although Liotard was accomplished also in other techniques, he had made of pastel his chosen medium and in 1761 explained: ‘for its beauty, vivacity, freshness and lightness of palette, pastel painting is more beautiful than any other kind of painting’ (quoted in English in Jeffares, op. cit., 2015, p. 27). Yet in contrast with the success he gained among patrons, contemporary artists and art critics resisted the lure of Liotard’s work. Not only was portraiture considered a more commercial enterprise than history painting, but also Liotard’s unconventional compositions, the choice of stark flat backgrounds, and his use of bold and contrasting colors were all transgressions to the well-established traditions of the genre. The painter’s painstaking pursuit of truthfulness, rather than grace, made him famous for the honesty of his portraits - he was called the ‘painter of the truth’ - but also made some of his contemporaries uneasy.
In his London lodgings in Golden Square, Liotard had set up a gallery in which he displayed a rotating selection of his works for perspective clients. As first noted by Francis Russell when this pastel emerged on the art market in 1995, for the portrait of Susanna Lewis, Liotard went back to a composition of a few years earlier. In 1746, in Lyon, he made a portrait of the twenty-nine year old (and still unmarried) Marianne Lavergne (1717-1790), daughter of his sister Sara Liotard and of the merchant François Lavergne, now in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (fig. 2; inv. SK-A-228; see Roethlisberger and Loche, op. cit., no. 159, ill.; and Jeffares, op. cit., online edition, no. J.49.1765). The portrait of Mademoiselle Lavergne was conceived as a genre scene, and became known as La Liseuse. The sitter is portrayed seated in a rustic wooden chair against an empty background, her eyes lowered, almost closed, at the letter she holds in her hands. She is wearing the traditional dress of a peasant woman from the region of Lyon, depicted meticulously by Liotard; she wears a red ribbon in her hair and a small cross simply tied to her neck. The success of the composition of La Liseuse can be measured by the autograph versions known of the composition; the recent catalogue raisonné by Marcel Roethlisberger and Renée Loche records seven (op. cit., nos. 159-160, nos. 213-214, nos. 292-294, ill.). After his stay in Lyon, Liotard brought the prime version with him to Paris and used it extensively to advertise his skills as a portraitist. He presented it at Versailles and exhibited it in Paris at the Académie de Saint-Luc in 1751, and most likely the artist took it also with him in London.
In adapting the composition of La Liseuse for the portrait of Miss Lewis, Liotard made some notable changes. While the sitters are depicted on the same scale, the size of the support - in both cases vellum, which Liotard preferred to paper - is larger in the present version (the Amsterdam version measures 21 ½ by 17 inches), widening the plain brown background around the sitter. Susanna’s head is slenderer than Marianne’s and her neck longer, and her eyes are unmistakably open and no longer lowered. Indeed, Susanna appears interrupted in her reading and calmly gazes out towards the viewer. Her elegant costume, which certainly would have appeared unusual in a British context, is again rendered with exquisite precision, revealing Liotard’s almost obsessive fascination in depicting fabrics and textures, which he believed added interest and pleasure to a portrait. With great attention, he rendered the thick fabric of the corset, the nearly transparent silk of the shirt, and the glimmering quality of the skirt’s fabric. The red ribbon closing the corset is perhaps the most eye-catching element of the costume, while the two small pins pricked in it at left are easily missed. The latter detail was also used by Liotard in one of his largest works, known as the Lavergne family breakfast, dated 1754 and recently acquired by the National Gallery, London (fig. 3; inv. NG6685; see Roethlisberger and Loche, op. cit., no. 299, ill.; Jeffares, op. cit., online edition, no. J.49.1795, ill.).
While it is not exactly known who commissioned the portrait of Susanna Lewis, it can be assumed it was herself or a member of her family. She was twenty-six when the portrait was made, and still an unmarried heiress, and it has been suggested that the portrait might have been commissioned (and more widely disseminated by means of a number of contemporary prints after it) with the prospect of finding a husband for Susanna (Roethlisberger and Loche, op. cit., p. 460). She did not find a life companion until several years later, however. Neil Jeffares, to whom we are grateful for the rich and unpublished biographical documentation he provided regarding the portrait’s sitter and her family, has intriguingly suggested that the pastel could have been commissioned by Susanna’s aunt, Elisabeth Collyer (1714-1800). A well-known philanthropist, supporter of the scientist Joseph Priestley and follower of the Unitarian Rev. Theophilus Lindsey, she instructed in her will to leave to her niece, among other things, her ‘Snuff Box set with Precious Stones’ and also ‘the two Pictures of my Father and Mother now in my house in Titchfield-Street and all my Pictures of her own person if not given in my Lifetime.’ Unfortunately, it cannot be proven that Liotard’s pastel was one of those portraits, but the pastel was at some point owned by Susanna and her husband, and later passed to subsequent generations of the family, until it was sold at Christie’s in London in 1995. It survives in remarkable condition as a testament to Liotard’s excellence in his chosen medium and his originality as an artist.