Enfilade

As reported by Artdaily.org:

Hubert Robert, "Le pont sur le torrent," 13 x 20', 1780s, commissioned by Duc de Luynes for his hôtel particulier in the St-Germain quarter of Paris

Following the record-breaking success of its Old Master & 19th Century Art sale in December in London, Christie’s will present its flagship New York sale of Old Master & 19th Century Paintings, Drawings, and Watercolors in a two-part auction on Wednesday, January 27. This extraordinary sale of over 320 works presents the best examples of European art from the 15th to the 19th century, and features master works and recent rediscoveries from Lucas Cranach the Elder, Jan Brueghel II, Thomas Gainsborough, Gaetano Gandolfi, Louis Léopold Boilly, Jean Baptiste Camille Corot, and Samuel Palmer, among others. Total sales are expected to achieve in
excess of $48 million.

At over 20 feet in width, Le pont sur le torrent (estimate: $2-3 million) by the 18th-century French master Hubert Robert (1733-1808) is one of the largest Old Master paintings ever to be offered at Christie’s New York. This vast painting, which depicts a wild torrent of roaring waters descending into a waterfall below an arched stone bridge, was originally commissioned by the Duc de Luynes (1748-1793) for the dining room of his opulent Paris townhouse. Subsequent owners include the American newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst, who installed the painting and its equally massive mate La cascade in his beachfront castle in Sands Point, Long Island. Though the pair was separated in later years, Le pont sur torrent survives in its original state as a masterpiece of decorative painting with a dominating presence that is nearly cinematic in effect. Given its immense size, the canvas will be stretched on-site and installed in Christie’s Rockefeller Center galleries – the first time in more than 50 years that the painting will be publicly displayed. Hubert Robert’s vast canvas depicting a wild torrent of roaring waters that descend into a waterfall, surmounted by an ancient, arched bridge and peopled with laundresses and fishermen, is one of the largest works that the artist ever attempted — it measures nearly 20 feet wide — as well as one of the best documented. It was commissioned in the mid-1780s by the Duc de Luynes (1748-1793) for the dining room of his opulent townhouse in the rue Saint-Dominique in the Quartier Saint-Germain in Paris, along with a pendant of identical size depicting a more placid landscape also featuring a waterfall. In payment for the two paintings — and perhaps for the promise of other works as well — Robert was granted on the 22 March 1786 the immense sum of 25,000 livres in principal by the duke, which provided the artist with a rente (or annuity) of 2000 livres a year in interest payments for life (see Jean de Cayeux, op. cit.). It was an indication of the high position Robert held in the Parisian art world of the time, as few painters of the era were paid anything approaching that amount for two paintings, regardless of their size. . . .

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