Ceres (Summer)

Commissioned by Pierre Crozat [1665-1740] for the dining room of his hôtel on rue de Richelieu, Paris; by inheritance with the hôtel to his nephew, Louis François Crozat, marquis du Châtel [1691-1750], Paris; by inheritance with the hôtel to his daughter, Louise-Honorine Crozat [1737-1801, married 1750 to the duc de Choiseul], Paris; the hôtel was sold in 1772 and demolished shortly thereafter, before which the painting was removed, probably to the Choiseul's Château de Chanteloup, Touraine; (estate sale of Etienne François, duc de Choiseul [1719-1785], Paillet, Paris, 18 December 1786, no. 3, with _Winter_ from the same series); purchased by Meunier. Jean Baptiste Pierre Le Brun [1748-1813], Paris; (his own sale, Le Brun, Paris, 11 April-8 May 1791, 10th day [April 20], no. 204, with _Winter_); Rebes; (sale, Le Brun, Paris, 15 November 1791, no. 95, with _Winter_).[1] Roehn, Paris.[2] Charles Wertheimer [d. 1911], London. (Charles Sedelmeyer Galleries, Paris), by 1895; sold 1898 to Sir Lionel Phillips, bt. [1855-1936], Tylney Hall, Winchfield;[3] (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 25 April 1913, no. 72); Nicholson. Henri Michel-Lévy [1845-1914], Paris; (his sale, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 12-13 May 1919, no. 28); Léon Michel-Lévy [1846-1925], Paris; (his sale, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 17-18 June 1925, 1st day, no. 160);[4] Batteroze or Betteroze. Charles-Louis Dreyfus [1870-1929], Paris.[5] (Wildenstein & Co., Inc., Paris, New York, and London), by 1935;[6] sold February 1954 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[7] gift 1961 to NGA. [1] Annotated copies of the sale catalogue give the name variously as "Rebes," "Mr. le president Rebe," and "de Rebes." See the extended description of this sale in the sale catalogues portion of the Getty Provenance Index Database, J. Paul Getty Trust (photocopy in NGA curatorial files), which includes the comment: "It is not known from which legislative body his title of president is taken, nor has his full name been found." [2] Pierre Rosenberg says this was "probably Adolphe Eugène Gabriel Roehn (1780-1867) and not his son" (Alphonse); Margaret Morgan Grasselli and Pierre Rosenberg, _Watteau 1684-1721_, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris; Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin; Washington, D.C., 1984: 326. [3] According to the 1895 Sedelmeyer catalogue and the catalogue of the 1935 Copenhagen exhibition, and repeated in William E. Suida and Fern Rusk Shapley, _Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection Acquired by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, 1951-1956_, Washington, D.C., 1956: 204, the painting was supposed to have been in the Hugh A.J. Munro of Novar collection in Ross, Scotland. However, _Spring_, another painting in the series, was actually in the Munro collection (and sold at Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 1 June 1878, no. 149). [4] Pierre Rosenberg, ed., _Vies anciennes de Watteau_, Paris, 1984, erroneously says this sale was in May. [5] Published as with Dreyfus in Louis Dimier, _Les peintres français du XVIIIe siècle. Histoire des vies et catalogue des oeuvres_, 2 vols., Paris and Brussels, 1928-1930: 1(1928):31, no. 26. [6] The painting was lent by Wildenstein to a 1935 exhibition in Copenhagen. [7] The bill of sale (copy in NGA curatorial files, see also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/468) is dated February 10, 1954, and was for a total of fourteen paintings; payments by the Foundation continued to March 1957.