Jacques-André PORTAIL (Brest 1695 - Versailles 1759) - Lot 61

Jacques-André PORTAIL (Brest 1695 - Versailles 1759) Young woman seated reading Black pencil, red chalk and watercolor H. 29 cm - L. 22.5 cm DB Like the first copy, this drawing is rough-hewn, leaving the white paper reserves to suggest the position of the non-visible body. This deliberate non-finito accentuates the precision of the pencil on the more advanced parts, such as the hands and face. The evocation emerges with admirable acuity from the evanescent white paper, as a memory emerges in our memory as a winter light slants between two shreds of fog. The artist unravels his talent with happiness, and no doubt the recipient of these two drawings was an aesthete capable of understanding these finesses; an amateur like the Marquis de Ménars, whose February 1782 sale at his Hôtel de la place des Victoires thus mentions under number 342 Two studies of young girls seated; one is holding a cat and the other appears to be reading. They are in three pencils and are not entirely finished.