(Rivoli 1719–1795 Paris)
Fête Champêtre,
oil on canvas, 91 x 121 cm, framed

We are grateful to Helmut Börsch-Supan for endorsing the attribution of the present painting to Charles Amédée Philippe van Loo on the basis of a digital photograph and for his help in cataloguing this lot (written communication).

Börsch-Supan compares the present composition to a pair of paintings slightly smaller in size (68 x 106 cm) depicting the embarcation for Cythera and a Fête Champêtre. They had been painted by van Loo in 1750 in his function as court painter to Frederick II of Prussia for the ‘Konfidenztafelzimmer’ (the private dining room, destroyed in 1945) at the Potsdam City Palace. Due to relocation during the war, when the pictures were kept at Charlottenburg Palace, they are now again at Potsdam (Foundation Prussian Palaces and Gardens Berlin-Brandenburg). The picture featuring the dancing party compares particularly well even in the landscape details, with the trees showing the same structure of branches and foliage. As to the treatment of the garments, fragmented and highly dynamic draperies are typical for van Loo’s painting style. This lends his compositions a somewhat laboured and augmented vivacity – a characteristic trait also visible in his portraits. The individual motifs were borrowed from Antoine Watteau and, even more distinctly, from his follower Nicolas Lancret, both were held in high esteem by Frederick II.

Van Loo was a member of a French family of artists, originally from the Netherlands. He was born in Rivoli near Turin in 1719 as a son of the painter Jean-Baptiste van Loo, who became his first teacher. He trained in Paris and from 1738 travelled to Rome, Naples, Florence and Aix-en-Provence, returning to Paris in 1745. In 1748, he was called to the court of Frederick II of Prussia, where he pursued a versatile career also working as a ceiling painter and tapestry designer. Granted leave by the King, he returned to Paris, during the Seven Years war (1756–1763) and then mainly worked as a portraitist in Berlin again between 1763 and 1769.