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X. Le Guitariste

Entered September 2020; revised May 2025

fig 1

Whereabouts unknown

Oil on canvas

67 x 53 cm

 

PROVENANCE

Paris, collection of baron Emmanuel Léonino. (1864-1936; mining entrepreneur). His sale, Paris, Galerie Charpentier, March 18-19, 1937, cat. 63: “WATTEAU (ÉCOLE D’ANTOINE . . . LE GUITARISTE. Assis sur un rocher, Coiffié, en veste bleu garnie d’une collerette blanche, il accorde son instrument. Toile. Haut. 0 1m67; larg. 0m53. Cadre en bois sculpté.” Sold for 7,800 francs.

 

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adhémar, Watteau (1950), cat. 315.

Montagni and Macchia, L’opera completa di Watteau (1968), cat. 2o–Z.

 

REMARKS

As far as can be determined, this painting went unnoticed until after it appeared in the Léonino sale in 1937. Adhémar rejected it, classifying it in a section devoted to paintings “École de Watteau, douteux, incertains,”.but she did not comment upon it. Likewise, Montagni and Macchia followed suit, repeating Adhémar’s view but without expressing any opinion of their own. None of the more recent critics—Roland Michel, Posner, Temperini, Glorieux—have commented on the work. Because it was never reproduced, it fell from sight.

In that the Léonino painting was not given to Watteau, even in the 1930s when attributions were freer, there is little likelihood that we would think better of it were it to reappear today.

As the picture showed the Mezzetin outdoors, seated on a rock, it may have been analogous to one of the versions of Watteau’s compositions featuring the commedia dell’arte actor, such as the ones in the New York Metropolitan Museum and in Vaduz. However, in those paintings the character wears a loose flowing cap whereas Léonino’s picture showed him with a tricorn, the type of hat he wears in paintings such as Leçon d’amour.