Attributed to Louis Chéron – St Philip baptising the Eunuch of Candace

£3,200.00

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Oil on copper (grisaille technique). Painted mark H ּ 15 on reverse. Displayed in its original carved and gilded Regency frame, made by Temple & Son 1809-1839 at 50 Great Titchfield St, Fitzroy Square 1811-1839. The title appears in the catalogue for Chéron’s studio sale in 1726, lot No. 114, “The Apostle Baptizing”. This painting is unusual to find on copper in the grisaille technique, usually reserved for his drawings. Chéron’s paintings decorated many country houses throughout England including Boughton House, Northamptonshire, London at Montague House (1706–12), at Ditton Park, Buckinghamshire, at Burghley House, Northamptonshire, and in the gallery and little dining-room at Chatsworth House, Derbyshire. The present painting relates to a drawing and etching (printed in reverse) both executed by Louis Chéron at the beginning of the 18th century.

Copper: 14 1/8 x 11 1/8 in. (36 x 28.4 cm).
Frame: 16 7/8 x 14 1/4 in. (43 x 36.3 cm).

Provenance

Possibly bequeathed by the artist, together with the rest of the contents of his studio, to Isaac Grassineau.
Possibly the Chéron studio sale, London, Covent Garden, 26 & 28 Feb 1725 & 2nd March 1726. Third day of the sale, 2nd March, lot number 114, “The Apostle Baptizing”.
Possibly James Stanley, the 10th Earl of Derby who acquired a “surprisingly” high proportion of the oil sketches at the sale. Of the drawings J. Stanley bought, the majority were acquired for the British Museum in 1953: twenty were unaccounted for. Inevitably the drawings in the sale were catalogued more telegraphically than the pictures.

Re: The Louis Cheron Sale Catalogue, author, Francis Russell, article 1988, The Burlington Magazine, pages 464-467.

The painting was acquired by (RFA) in May 2024, on the understanding it had been purchased via another dealer who had said the picture originated from a listed building in Derby. Originally sold as a decorative painting by an unknown artist.

Other known impressions

Drawing: British Museum (T,14.17). Bequeathed by William Fawkener in 1769. Height: 346 millimetres. Width: 270 millimetres.
Print: Etched by the artist in reverse (BM impression, 1874,0808.946). Height: 360 millimetres. Width: 284 millimetres.

Description

Louis Chéron may well have completed his cycle of the Acts of the Apostles because of the considerable interest in Raphael’s cartoons at the beginning of the 18th century. Engraved and copied several times these works from the Royal Collections were so admired that they inspired the decorations for St. Paul’s Cathedral. Louis Chéron could not claim to rival Raphael, but he was best placed in England to recreate a cycle of the Acts of the Apostles that would recall the spirit of the Master.

In 1700, Louis Chéron signed a series of drawings relating to the Acts of the Apostles . In the tradition of the ten cartoons (1515/16) by Raphael, made for tapestries intended for the Sistine Chapel. They were engraved in a horizontal format.

1. Saint Peter Healing the Lame Man
2. The Conversion of Saint Paul
3. The Laying of the Hands
4. The Death of Saphire
5. Saint Philip baptizing the Eunuch of Candace.

Brand

Chéron, Louis (1655–1725)

Louis Chéron was born in Paris on 2 September 1655 (Auguste, 379) into a notable French protestant family of artists, the son of Henri Chéron (d. 1677), a miniature painter and an engraver, and the younger brother of Elizabeth-Sophie Chéron (1648–1711), also a painter and engraver. After being taught first by his father, he studied at the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, where he won the prix de Rome twice, in 1676 and 1678; on the first occasion he received financial help from his sister to visit Italy, where, as his many surviving drawings show, he particularly studied works by Raphael and Giulio Romano. Back in Paris he received several commissions, notably in 1687 and 1690 from the Guild of Goldsmiths for paintings to be presented in May of those years to the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. Studies for the 1687 painting, The Prophecy of Habbakuk (Musée du Louvre), survive; it was later engraved by Nicolas-Henri Tardieu. It was also at this time that Chéron produced a series of decorative paintings on classical and biblical themes for the drawing-room of his sister's house in Paris. Soon after, Chéron decided to leave France, no doubt spurred by the persecution of Huguenots following the revocation of the edict of Nantes in 1685. He is recorded in the registers of the Huguenot congregation at the Savoy Chapel in London in 1693 and was naturalized in 1710. His going to London was possibly at the suggestion of Ralph, first earl and later duke of Montague, for whom in 1695 in the recently completed Boughton House, Northamptonshire, he painted several ceilings, including those of the saloon and the staircase, with mythological scenes, showing the clear influence of Charles Le Brun; an album in the British Museum contains six drawings for these by Chéron. He also worked in London at Montague House (1706–12), at Ditton Park, Buckinghamshire, at Burghley House, Northamptonshire, and in the gallery and little dining-room at Chatsworth House, Derbyshire. In 1709 he was one of five artists invited to submit designs for the dome of St Paul's Cathedral. But his work was not of especially high quality, and it was later criticized by both George Vertue and Horace Walpole. In 1694 he had produced a series of plates for an edition of the Psalms, published by his sister, and he now turned increasingly to book illustration. Most notably he produced a set of designs, in collaboration with Sir James Thornhill, for the Oxford Baskett Bible (1717) and, also with Thornhill, a set for the elegant edition of Milton's works published in London in 1720 by Jacob Tonson. Chéron was also an important drawing teacher, first at the private school established in 1711 by Sir Godfrey Kneller at his house on Great Queen Street and then—when Kneller's academy split into two groups in 1718—at the St Martin's Lane Academy, of which, together with John Vanderbank, he was a founder. At this later academy particular emphasis was placed on life drawing, a female model being introduced for the first time in 1722. On 26 May 1725 Chéron died, unmarried, from an attack of apoplexy, and three days later he was buried at St Paul's, Covent Garden. Several engravings by him after his original designs survive, as do many published from his paintings by other artists, most notably two on historical subjects, The Marriage of Charles Ist and Henrietta Maria, engraved by Nicolas Charles Dupuis, and The Coronation of George Ist, by Claude Dubosc. From Vertue we know of two posthumous sales of pictures and drawings left by Chéron in his studio, in 1726 and in 1740. The earlier sale was of eighty-three paintings and no fewer than 161 drawings, some of which were bought by James Stanley, tenth earl of Derby, from whose heir the majority passed to the British Museum in 1953.