Cataloge Raisonné des Diverses Curiosités du Cabinet de Feu M. Quentin de Lorangere . . .
Paris: Chez Jacques Barois, 1744. First edition. 12mo, contemporary half calf, subdued paste paper boards, xviii, [4], 293, [1], 96 pages. Frontis. A little chipped at the head and foot of the spine, joints a bit rubbed and tended but sound; upper board somewhat rubbed, some light damp-staining more or less throughout; a very good copy. Item #18704
An extensive auction catalog from one of the leading Parisian art dealers of the period, this copy priced fairly extensively in an early hand. Besides the paintings, prints, and drawings, this sale includes a section of seashells. (Gersaint had evidently helped Lorangere form that collection.) “Gersaint was also the first dealer in France to realize the potential of public auctions . . . which he organized as a kind of public spectacle and which he recommended to curieux as events both instructive and amusing. These sales were accompanied by sales catalogs, which were his most important and lasting contribution to the art of dealing. . . . More than one of his catalogs employed a frontispiece by Charles-Nicolas Cochin [as here], that, like Watteau’s shopsign, discloses the intimate sphere of privileged amateurs” (McClellan, 1995). McClellan argues that besides the scholarly value of his catalogs, the catalogs themselves helped burnish Gersaint’s image as a disinterested, reputable dealer whose attributions were based on scholarship rather than profit. It is in this catalog, with Gersaint’s biography of Watteau, that Gersaint makes his explanation of Watteau’s L’Enseigne de Gersaint—the putative advertisement for Gersaint’s gallery recognized as a late major work from Watteau—as well as his own relationship to the painter (who died in Gersaint’s arms), all in a high enough style that for an auction catalog managed to attract contemporary reviews as a literary work, “easy, natural, and better than we could have expected from a man of commerce” (Mercure de France, Feb. 1744, as quoted by McLellan, 1996). This catalog also includes a lengthy essay on Jacques Callot, and an essay from Gersaint on the social benefits of collecting and connoisseurship. McClellan, Andrew. “Edme Gersaint and the Marketing of Art in Eighteenth-Century Paris.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 29, no. 2 (1995): 218-22. McClellan, Andrew. “Watteau’s Dealer: Gersaint and the Marketing of Art in Eighteenth-Century Paris.” The Art Bulletin 78, no. 3 (1996): 439-53.
Price: $1,250.00