Twelve canvases possibly coming from the castle of Chanteloup

after Jean Pillement

French school of the 18th century
according to Jean PILLEMENT (1728-1808).

Chinoiseries.

Twelve canvases.

Height. 219 or 220, Width from 34 to 94 cm.
(old restorations).

Provenance:
- comes from the castle of Chanteloup in Amboise ;
- in the Pic-Pâris family since 1823, at La Closerie le Pavillon, then at the château de la Roche in Pocé-sur-Cisse, Touraine ;
- by descent, Touraine.

Twelve canvases from the 18th century representing "chinoiseries" after Pillement. The paintings are said to come from the castle of Chanteloup.

A Chinese decoration

The splendor of the Siamese embassies received by Louis XIV in 1686 awakened in France an interest in Asia that marked the arts throughout the 18th century. It was supported by the development of intellectual exchanges with the sending of Jesuits to China and that of commercial exchanges with the opening of a sea route used by ships carrying lacquerware, porcelain, fans or wallpaper. The merchant merchants who bought them reassembled these objects into bronzes or silverware, incorporated them into sumptuous furniture, and the painters were called upon to create the decor that would house these rich collections.

Jacques Vigouroux-Duplessis (before 1680-1732) was one of the first to animate the woodwork with exotic scenes and François Boucher (1703-1770), himself a collector of Chinese objects, contributed greatly to the spread of a taste for chinoiseries. The "Scenes of the Chinese life" are engraved according to his drawings by Gabriel Huquier around 1742 and he creates motives for the porcelain manufacture of Sèvres or for those of tapestry of Beauvais. His "Tenture chinoise" was a great success and was woven ten times between 1743 and 1775, including several times for the king. It is thus that the decorations of chinoiseries often adopt pastel tints which are those of the silk skeins. We find them, for example, in the Lyon painter Jean Pillement (1728-1808).

An element of the same decoration is preserved in a private collection in Touraine.

Possibly coming from the castle of Chanteloup.

Property of the Duke of Choiseul in the years 1760-1770, the castle of Chanteloup in Amboise was the refuge of the minister of Louis XV after his disgrace. With his rich wife, Éléonore-Louise Crozat du Châtel, Choiseul illustrates the taste of his century for China, as evidenced by the Pagoda erected by Louis-Denis Le Camus in 1775 in the park. The interior decoration is also arranged in the Chinese taste. The Chinese lacquer chest of drawers by Jean Demoulin illustrates this perfectly (n°794-2-1). It was seized in 1794 by Charles-Antoine Rougeot to constitute the first collections of the museum of Tours. The inventory of furniture belonging to Louise Marie Adélaïde de Bourbon-Penthièvre, drawn up from 29 Pluviôse year II, also mentions a certain number of works of Far Eastern inspiration in Chanteloup. Drawn up by Joseph-Louis Guyot, a notary public living in Noizay, it mentions at least ten times "Chinese paper" or "Chinese" drapes presented on canvas. These descriptions are not without evoking those of our suite of twelve canvases with chinoiserie decorations. In addition, the inventory mentions two hangings composed of characters, one of which is presented in "five pieces" with its gilded wooden frames and estimated at 10 books (n°1883). If the estimate is low, other suites are referenced at higher prices. The six-room hanging displayed in the dining room is estimated at 100 livres. Other rooms in the château are adorned with more numerous elements, such as the salon in the pavilion of the Jumeau pond. It is decorated with "fourteen pieces and two door tops of Chinese paper framed with chopsticks.

Chanteloup was bought in 1802 by the scientist Chaptal, in order to set up a beet farm. In order to pay off the accumulated debts, he gave a mandate to the banker Baudrand to sell all the estate's assets to the "Black Band", who in eighty days destroyed what five centuries had built. Only the Chinese Pagoda was saved, the last relic of this vanished castle. According to the family tradition, our twelve paintings were bought by Edme-Silvain Pic-Paris in the study of Master Guiot, at the last sale of Chanteloup's movable property in 1823. The panels were immediately placed in the dining room of the family home, the "Closerie le Pavillon" in Pocé-sur-Cisse. In 1854, they went to the small salon of the Château de la Roche, newly built nearby by the Amboisian architect Silvain Philippe Châtaignier. Master builder of the castles of Launay, then Bellecour in Pocé-sur-Cisse, Châtaignier used elements from Chanteloup for the construction of many local monuments, as kindly specified by Véronique Moreau, honorary curator at the Fine Arts Museum of Tours. And for good reason, the architect actively participated in the dismantling of the castle. These paintings have never left the family home until today, with the exception in 1903 of their restoration by the Chapuis house in Paris. In any case, they illustrate the refined taste of this great Amboisian family, a lineage of several generations of postmasters from the 18th century onwards, and from which Eugène Pic-Pâris distinguished himself by becoming mayor of Tours and senator of Indre-et-Loire at the beginning of the 20th century.