Unknown Woman as the Personification of a Spring
(La Belle Source)
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Rectangular oil painting with a portrait of a woman personifying a spring. The woman is shown half-length, her hands clasped on top of an urn on its side on the left, flowing with water across her waist. Her body faces the viewer, with her head slightly inclined to the right; she looks out at the viewer. She wears her dark hair up, trimmed with a few flowers; a loose white chemise opening to reveal her left breast and a string of pearls over her right shoulder. Reeds appear to the left; there is a tree in the far right background, against a grey background. There is a rock in the left foreground.
This painting may not represent a specific sitter, but an allegorical personification of a spring or river nymph, with the traditional attributes of reeds and water flowing from a ceramic vessel. Such figures were used by classically-inspired painters to communicate the land's fertility. There is another version of the work in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (acc. no. 56.100.2).
Nattier painted other women in this guise, called 'en source', in works dating from 1734, 1739, 1740, and 1747. It was a tradition begun in the early 18th century. In these other portraits, women do not bare their breasts and are often wrapped in voluminous cloaks. Nattier's contemporaries, such as Louis Dupont, also used this motif in a more chaste manner (Paris, Louvre, inv. no. RF 1992-413). In 1757, Charles-Nicolas Cochin criticised the indecency of Nattier's portraits of women in various states of undress, perhaps with this portrait in mind (see Xavier Salmon, 'Jean-Marc Nattier, 1685-1766', Paris, 1999, pp. 190, 269-70).
Nattier came from a family of artists. He trained as a history painter and was received into the Académie Royale with this title, but he chose to specialise in the more lowly, but more lucrative, genre of portraiture. Remaining in Paris for much of his life, he built up a profitable business painting fashionable portraits that often drew on mythological or allegorical themes. From 1732 he became successful at court, particularly with his paintings of noblewomen.
Phillippa Plock and Juliet Carey, 2014
Dimensions (mm) / weight (mg)
808 x 649
Signature & date
not signed or dated
Provenance
- Acquired by Baron James de Rothschild (b.1792, d.1868); by descent to his son Baron Edmond de Rothschild (b.1845, d.1934); by descent to his son James de Rothschild (b.1878, d.1957); inherited by his wife Dorothy de Rothschild (b.1895, d.1988); then to a Rothschild Family Trust.
Collection
- Waddesdon (Rothschild Family)
- On loan since 1997
Bibliography
- Xavier Salmon; Jean-Marc Nattier, 1685-1766; Musée national des châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon, 26 octobre 1999-30 janvier 2000; Paris; Réunion des musées nationaux; 1999; p. 249
- Xavier Salmon, Jean-Marc Nattier à Chantilly, Le Musée Condé, 56, 1999, 26-31; p. 30, fig. 15
Related files
- http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/110001632 [accessed 12 June 2012, version in Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (acc. no 56.100.2)]
- http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/110001632 [accessed 12 June 2012, version in Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (acc. no 56.100.2)]
Subject person
- Louise Henriette de Bourbon-Conti, Previous identification
Person as Subject
Subjects
- Figures/Female
- Portraits/Female
- Work & Occupations/Social Rank/Nobility
- Allegory & Personifications/Water
- Nature, Landscape & The Elements/Water
- Figures/Notable Body Parts/Breasts
- Nature, Landscape & The Elements/Trees & Plants/Reeds
- Nature, Landscape & The Elements/Trees & Plants