Collection Alfred Pacquement (1872-1948) ou Charles Pacquement (1871-1950), Paris, 1911

Collection Ochsé (peut-être Robert Lucien Willy Ochsé (1972-1952) ou Fernand Ochsé (1879-1944)), Paris, 1936 

Vente Paris, Pierre Bergé & associés, 25 novembre 2015, lot 103

Vente Paris, Artcurial, 18 octobre 2016, lot 1

Acquis lors de cette vente par l'actuel propriétaire 

Collection Louis Grandchamp des Raux

Paris, Palais de l’école nationale des Beaux-Arts, Exposition de l’oeuvre de Fantin-Latour, mai - juin 1906, n° 137, p. 51

Grenoble, musée Bibliothèque, Centenaire de Henri Fantin-Latour, août-octobre 1936, n° 190, p. 37

V. Dubourg, Catalogue de l’œuvre complet de Fantin Latour 1849-1904, Paris, Henri Floury, 1911, n° 405, p.54

É.Michel, R. Aulanier, H. de Vallée, Watteau L’Embarquement pour l’île de Cythère, Tours, Editions des musées nationaux, Tours, 1939, pl. XVIII, fig. 60

H. Adhémar, L’Embarquement pour l’île de Cythère : Watteau, Le musée des chefs-d’oeuvre, Vendôme, Paris, 1947, mention p.20

in catalogue d'exposition "Fantin-Latour", Paris, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Ottawa, Galerie nationale du Canada, San Francisco, California Palace of the Legion of Honour, 1982 - 1983, mention p. 158

in catalogue d'exposition, "Watteau, 1684-1721", Washington, National Gallery of Art, Paris, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Berlin, Schloss Charlottenburg, 1984 - 1985, mention p. 401

in catalogue d'exposition, "Copier créer. De Turner à Picasso : 300 œuvres inspirées par les maîtres du Louvre", Paris, Musée du Louvre, 1993, mention p. 228

P. Michel, C. Ming Peng, F. Robichon, Fortune et infortune d’un maître : Watteau et sa réception, Institut de recherches historiques du Septentrion, Lille, 2023, fig. 60, p. 105

Watteau’s masterpiece, L’Embarquement pour Cythère, is a seminal 18^th century painting whose image is widely well known. It is this extraordinary work that inspired Henri Fantin-Latour, who enjoyed copying, in the Louvre, the works of Old Masters such as Raphael, Rembrandt, Rubens, Poussin, Watteau, Géricault, Delacroix, and many others. Among his paintings done after the Venetians, Titian and Veronese, were the most admired. He reproduced the Noces de Cana, (Paris, Musée du Louvre, no. INV 142) as many as ten times. While his activity as a copyist – something he considered to be an act of devotion towards his predecessors - led to lucrative commissions, it also fostered the development of his ideas and fuelled his desire to create masterpieces of his own.

The name Fantin-Latour first appears in the museum’s records in 1852, when he registered to copy Titian’s Portrait de François 1er (Paris, Musée du Louvre). Until 1870, he spent many long hours working in the museum that he was particularly fond of and it was there where he first met Victoria Dubourg, his future wife. In the catalogue raisonné of Fantin-Latour, compiled in 1911, Victoria Dubourg recorded a total of one hundred and seventeen copies of paintings in the Louvre.

Two photographs taken in the studio of Fantin-Latour, on 8 Rue des Beaux-Arts in Paris, allow us to see the present painting on the wall (1). The work is also mentioned by Charles Saunier who described the studio as “low-ceilinged, narrow, poorly lit…without ornaments and with walls adorned by copies after Veronese, Tintoretto, Delacroix and Watteau. There was notably an interpretation of 'L’Embarquement pour Cythère', unforgettable” (2). The painting was kept by the artist until his death in 1904 and was exhibited in his retrospective of 1906, then presented at the centenary of Fantin-Latour in Grenoble in 1936. It is probably after the 1906 exhibition that Alfred or Charles Pacquement would have acquired it. (3)

1.      See Paul Cardon, Portrait d’Ignace Henri Jean Théodore Fantin-Latour, dit Henri Fantin-Latour (1836-1904), painter and lithographer, in his studio, between 1875 and 1904, albumin print 25.40 x 20.50 cm, Paris, Musée Carnavalet, Histoire de Paris, inv. PH8823. The painting can be seen in the centre left.

2.      Charles Saunier, « Les domiciles de Fantin-Latour », in Bulletin VIII - Société historique du VIe arrondissement de Paris, 1905, t. I, p. 78.

3.      Victoria Dubourg, in the 1911 catalogue, mentions that the painting now belonged to « M. Pacquement ».