Jean-Baptiste Pillement (Lyon 1728-1808)


Chinoiserie figures in a boat beside a garden pavilion oil on canvas241 x 212.5cm (94 7/8 x 83 11/16in).
|ProvenanceProbably David Garrick, Fuller House, Hampton, near LondonWith Galerie Gildas Guédel, ParisPrivate Collection, EuropeLiteratureM. Gordon-Smith, 'The Influence of Jean Pillement on French and English Decorative Art', in Artibus et Historiae, n. 41M. Gordon-Smith, Pillement, Krakow, 2006, pp. 54-55, fig. 36, ill. p. 58The present work was probably commissioned by David Garrick, the famous Shakespearean actor. It was part of a large-scale decorative scheme that adorned the drawing room of Fuller House, the actor's residence in Hampton, near London. Garrick acquired Fuller House in 1755 and commissioned Robert Adam, Thomas Chippendale and Capability Brown to redesign and redecorate the house and gardens. Garrick was introduced to Pillement by Charles Leviez, another well-known actor, in 1757. An invoice, dated 16 July 1757, records that Garrick paid the artist £150 to decorate several rooms in his new home.Five further chinoiserie wall panels of varying sizes, now in private collections in France, are also thought to have formed part of the same decorative scheme. The measurements of each of these six large works closely matches the window and wall designs of the original building plans for the drawing room at Fuller House. Furthermore, the inventory of Garrick's estate, produced after his death in 1779, states that the drawing room was 'fitted up entirely in the Chinese taste hung round with Canvas and ornamented with paintings formed by panels in borders of papier Machee'. Each of this set of six works shows similar markings around the edges which Gordon-Smith suggests are the traces of the earlier papier mache borders (see: M. Gordon-Smith, ibid, p. 55).The present picture was engraved by P.C. Canot in 1759, with a few differences, for Pillement's series Scenes chinoises.