SIMON LANTARA (1729-1778) FRENCH OLD MASTER OIL to £23,000 SUNSET WOMAN - SUPERB
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SIMON LANTARA (1729-1778) FRENCH OLD MASTER OIL to £23,000 SUNSET WOMAN - SUPERB:
$878.29
SIMON LANTARA (1729-1778) FRENCH OLD MASTER OIL to £23,000 SUNSET WOMAN - SUPERBSIMON LANTARA (1729-1778) FRENCH OLD MASTER OIL to £23,000 SUNSET WOMAN - SUPERB
SIMON MATHURIN LANTARA
( 1729 - 1778 )
An outstanding old master oil by Simon Lantara depicting a woman running away from a snake in a landscape at sunset. The work is highly detailed and superbly painted. A real gem of a painting - sourced privately and in excellent condition - original labels verso
Title: “Woman in Landscape - Sunset\"
Provenance: Private collection - Neuilly
Medium: Oil on panel
Size: Measures c. 7.5 x 9 inches unframed / 11 x 13 framed
Condition: Very very good
The learned historiographer Bellier de la Chavignerie was the first to spread the foolish stories that turned Lantara into a vulgar and lazy drunkard. The fact is that his origins were extremely humble. Lacking the manners or savoir-faire that might have enabled him, in the absence of the teaching of which he had been deprived, to participate in society life and find patrons, he never left the working-class milieu in which he was brought up. If he went to the cabaret, it was only to take his modest meals there, after which he would go to the countryside to make some studies and sketches, and to produce the charmingly realistic pictures that he bequeathed to us. Bellier de la Chavignerie\'s research established that Lantara was the son of Françoise Malvillain, an unmarried woman. Following a trial, Simon Mathurin, a weaver, married her and formally recognised the child, who was then three years old. Five years later, the young Simon started work as an animal-keeper at the château de la Renoumière. The owner\'s son noticed the young herdsman\'s sketches and found him a position with a painter in Versailles whose name is unknown. Lantara soon left him to enter the service of a Parisian painter, whose name is also not given, receiving wages in the form of painting lessons from his master. When he felt strong enough, Lantara went to live in an attic in the rue St Denis. In the house lived a greengrocer called Jacquelin, with whom he fell in love and married. He sold his pictures and drawings to dealers for atrociously low prices. At the age of 49 years, ill and in precarious circumstances, he had to go to hospital.
After his death, some justice seems to have been done to his talent; his works were engraved. At the Salon de la Correspondance in 1783, two pictures were exhibited: Landscape at a Beautiful Morning Moment and Landscape at the Point of Sunset. During his lifetime his works were shown only at the place Dauphine; in 1771, Two Landscapes, Two Pictures, one of which was Moonlight, and Two Drawings in Lead Pencil Heightened with White. In 1773, Landscapes were shown. In a touching tribute to his memory, the department of Seine-et-Marne bought the cottage in which he was born. An etching by Lantara is also mentioned.
The figures in his landscapes are generally attributed to Vernet, Casanova, Barré, Bernard and Taunay. This would seem to us indisputable but for the fact that the figures were added at the request of the dealers after they had acquired the canvases, to make them more saleable. It is hard to believe that a poor artist would have found any means of paying any more or less well-known artists from his miserable wages. Joseph Vernet, who painted a small portrait of Lantara, strikes us as capable of having painted some characters for him, out of kindness and perhaps as a way of showing his poor colleague how to go about things. However, as the excellent draughtsman that he was, Lantara seems entirely capable of having painted his figures for himself. The truth is, artist to the core, Lantara probably did not want to submit to social demands. He was an \'irregular\' or an \'independent\', as were Georges Michel, J.-F. Millet and Monticelli after him. Well before Moreau the Elder, Lantara brought the ring of truth to his landscapes; some of his drawings, in particular, are not out of place alongside those of Théodore Rousseau.
Museum and Gallery Holdings
Abbeville: Landscape
Amiens: Landscape
Besançon: Morning; Evening; Edges of a River
Béziers: Landscape; Huntsman on Horseback
Châteauroux: Edges of the River Loing
La Fère: Landscape
Nantes: Moonlight
Narbonne: Watercourse at Sunset
Poitiers: Landscapes
Rouen: two landscapes and a study
St Petersburg (Hermitage): Coastal Landscape
Valenciennes: Landscape
SIMON LANTARA (1729-1778) FRENCH OLD MASTER OIL to £23,000 SUNSET WOMAN - SUPERB:
$878.29