English: Claude Arnulphy (Lyon 1697 - 1786 Aix-en-Provence)

Portrait of Jean-Baptiste Boyer de Fonscolombe

signed and dated on verso: Arnulphy Pinzit. 1740

inscribed on sheet of paper center left: [upside down: D B C A] / S G N

oil on canvas, unlined

canvas: 25 ⅛ by 21 ⅞ in; 63.8 by 55.6 cm.

Provenance

Probably Irène Boyer de Fonscolombe (1799-1879), Hôtel Boyer de Fonscolombe, Aix-en-Provence;

Probably thence by descent to her son, Louis Charles Joseph Gaston de Saporta (1823-1895), Marquis de Saporta, Hôtel Boyer de Fonscolombe, Aix-en-Provence, by 1890;

Private collection, France;

With Galerie Éric Turquin, Paris;

From whom acquired by the present collector, 2008.

Note

The dashing French aristocrat and amateur artist Jean-Baptiste Boyer de Fonscolombe (1719-1785) sat for Claude Arnulphy in 1740 when only twenty-one years old. Looking directly at the viewer, Boyer de Fonscolombe exudes nonchalant elegance: although he is impeccably coiffed, his brown velvet jacket remains unbuttoned and his black cravat flutters in an apparent breeze. And while his fashionable attire signals nobility, his accessories point to artistic discernment.

Although Boyer de Fonscolombe was a career military man (serving first as lieutenant and then captain of a regiment in Flanders1), Arnulphy emphasizes his intellectual pursuits. Self-possessed and poised, the handsome sitter holds a porte mine, as if he were just interrupted while drawing. Tucked beneath his arm are two sheets of paper: one with a signum equation—possibly a Euclidian proof for calculating a triangle’s hypotenuse—the other illustrating a colored architectural plan of a scarped bastion. In addition to his erudition, Boyer de Fonscolombe alludes to his pursuits as a painter and miniaturist.2 An honorary member of the painting and sculpture Académie of Marseille (to which Arnulphy was elected in 1783), Jean-Baptiste worked in the style of Claude-Joseph Vernet and Claude Lorrain, chiefly producing seascapes. He later traveled to Italy, where he was admitted to the Roman Academy as an honorary member.3

The son of the painter Charles Arnulphy, Claude trained in Rome under Benedetto Luti, from whom the young artist adopted a flair for chromatic brilliance, evident in the play of blues and browns in the present work. After returning to France in 1722, Arnulphy settled in Aix-en-Provence, where he developed a reputation as a portraitist and established a particular connection with the Boyer de Fonscolombe family. In addition to this portrait, Arnulphy depicted the sitter’s elder brother Jean-Baptiste-Laurent (1716-1788), a lawyer and art collector,4 and his wife, Jeanne d’Albert de Saint-Hippolyte (1718-1795), in pastel.5

1 In 1759, the Duc de Villars appointed him chevalier of the Order of Saint-Louis.

2 See E. Parrocel, Annales de la peinture, Paris and Marseille 1862, pp. 335-337.

3 “Jean-Baptiste Boyer de Fonscolombe, Peintre-amateur,” in Mémoires de l’académie des sciences, agriculture, arts et belles-lettres, d’Aix, Vol. V, Aix 1844, pp. 181-186.

4 For a discussion of one of Jean-Baptiste Laurent Boyer's pendant Italianate paintings by Greuze, today in the Wadsworth Atheneum, see J. Baillio, "Jean Baptiste Greuze, French, 1725-1805, Indolence (La Paresseuse Italienne)," in Renaissance to Rococo: Masterpieces from the Wadsworth Atheneum of Art, exhibition catalogue, E. Zafran (ed.), New Haven and London 2004, pp. 148-149, cat. no. 56, reproduced.

5 See N. Jeffares, “Arnulphy, Claude,” in Dictionary of pastellists before 1800, http://www.pastellists.com/Articles/Arnulphy.pdf#search=%22arnulphy%22, updated 28 October 2023, inv. no. J.112.111. See also J.112.116. See his estate sale, Paris, Maître Lebrun, 18 January 1790.