Lot n° 12
Estimation :
1000 - 1500
EUR
Result without fees
Result
: 500EUR
Attributed to Guillaume Guillon-Lethière... - Lot 12 - Maison R&C, Commissaires-Priseurs Associés
Attributed to Guillaume Guillon-Lethière (1760-1832)
The Death of Virginia
Pen and brown ink
192 x 320 mm.
Annotated lower left: Guillon Le Thière
Related works:
- The Death of Virginia, 1828, oil on canvas, 4.58 m. by 7.78 m., Paris, Musée du Louvre, inv. 6229.
A spectacular "machine" of "late neoclassicism" with pharaonic dimensions, "The Death of Virginia", presented by Guillon-Lethière at the 1831 Salon, is the fruit of more than thirty years of reflection, beginning in 1795.
Our drawing, which freezes the general composition with its very clear lines and contours, differs from the final painted version completed in 1828 in one small but crucial detail. Virginie's head, left by life, tilts to the left, until it touches her mother's forehead, whereas it is thrown back to the right in the painting.
As evidence of the doubts about the positions of the group of figures of which Virginie is the pillar, a group of twelve studies is preserved in the Cabinet des Arts Graphiques of the Louvre (inv. RF 52607 to 52618). Four of these studies show proposals for Virginie in the position we see in our drawing (inv. RF 52611, RF 52612, RF 52613, RF 52615).
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