Keith I’m standing the gallery of French 17th
Century painting.
It’s always been one of my favorite galleries.
We acquire marvelous things but periodically there is the opportunity to acquire a work
that anchors the collection.
And there was an email from one of my colleagues at one of the two major auction houses in
London…
“Keith, I have something important to show you: Lebrun’s portrait of Jabach.”
This is not a picture for a Fifth Avenue apartment.
It’s not a picture for a small museum, it’s a picture for a great museum with great ambition.
We talked about the problems of the picture, the price and so forth.
I said I’ll go back to my director and we’ll see what we can do.
Keith is one of our most passionate and enthusiastic
curators.
He regularly comes to see me and tell me that he has just seen the most incredible, important
object that we have just got to have a go for.
But when he actually told me about this in detail, I thought, “Wow.”
This is an early work by the great Charles Le Brun.
I saw it first in photographs and then I was in London, I went to visit it.
It just blew me away.
There were two major problems.
Firstly, would we be able to get an export license?
Secondly, it was a big picture with a very big price.
We’ve been helped many times over the years by Jane Wrightsman with great French paintings.
And once again, Jane, our great benefactress, stepped up and said she was prepared to help us
The second problem remained: the export license.
We waited really with bated breath over one month, two month, three months.
There was all sorts of rumor and speculation.
It really looked as if we were going to get it and indeed we got the license.
This was a trajectory that nobody could have imagined.
It’s the greatness of this picture that it is not simply a splendid work of art but
it takes right into the heart of Paris in the 17th Century, rich banker, one of the
greatest collectors of Europe, of his day.
The picture was painted by Charles Le Brun for Everhard Jabach from Cologne Germany.
He moved to Paris in 1638 and became one of the wealthiest men in France.
He amassed an incredible collection of paintings which in 1661 were acquired by the crown.
This became the core collection for the Louvre.
This landmark picture of one of the great collectors is really one of the keystones
of French 17th century painting.
It’s Le Brun going beyond himself I think for somebody who we are told by his biographer
was of like mind and shared passions and the fact that in this family portrait he has allowed
Le Brun to introduce himself as a reflection in the mirror, tells the whole story about the
relationship of these two kindred spirits.
But you’ll see that the picture is divided right down the center.
Jabach, his artist, his cultural interests, presided over by Minerva, Ceralios Treatis,
the bible, three colors of chalks and this is just the point when three color chalk drawings
are coming into fashion.
And there’s his family and every one of these people you seem to know.
This reminds me of my younger daughter.
She can’t keep her hair up, the ribbons are coming untied, she’s playing with the
mirror, she’s tickling her brother but you know the next minute she’s going to pinch him.
Little Anna Marie who must be about eleven years old here has just come into her own.
Look at the whippet, the tail caught up between the legs.
This is a dog nervously waiting to find out nervously what it is she wants him to do.
The mother with this extraordinary dignity and then little Everhart
who is serving as the bridge between these two worlds.
It’s very French, you have grandeur, but intimacy.
This is just before he becomes the kings painter and takes of the decoration of Versailles
and all the king’s projects.
When Everhard Jabach dies in 1694 the picture is inherited by little Everhard who takes
it back to Cologne.
By the 18th century it’s one of the sights of the City.
In the aftermath of the French Revolution he moves it to London.
This picture dropped out of the literature from 1832 until 2013 when it was put on private
sale–but I’ll let Michael talk.
The painting’s has had its varnish removed.
It was a very, very discolored varnish, completely muted all of the coloring and I think above
all, this incredible control of tone.
It looks as you know as it always does without the varnish a little dry so I can wet out
a couple of areas.
This is very beautiful up by Anne Marie, his wife, this incredible luminous complexion
is contrasted against the painted landscape.
And this is Everhard junior, with his spaniel and hobby horse … and then the eldest daughter,
who is just extraordinary, at this side of the composition.
Now the cleaning is finished the next step is to deal with the structural issues.
The top 18 inches of the canvas was turned over a smaller stretcher to fit it into a
domestic hallway, and it has been turned out, but rather hurriedly, before we acquired it
and so what I’ll need to do is try and get out those distortions that rather interrupt
the composition, so that’s the next step.
The structural treatment has gone incredibly well.
It’s back in plane and ready to be re-stretched.
I’ve attached already a new strip lining which will facilitate that.
Once a little consolidation has been done it will be put back upright on the easel,
re-varnished which will completely saturate it so you’ll read the full color and tonal
range of the painting and the composition.
And then, dealing with a few little losses in the painting and then with a final varnish,
the picture in a few months should be on display in the galleries for the public to see.
The painting will take it’s place alongside
all of the great masterpieces in our galleries, a new foundation to the story we tell about
17th century painting in France.
For our visitors, it will be part of a narrative.
Few will know the behind-the-scenes story, the drama, that brought this painting to the museum.
Its because of Jayne that this picture is here.
Remember the great Rubens Family portrait, Wrightsman.
The great Lavoisier David, Wrightsman, the year before she had bought us the portrait
of Talleyrand and now one of the absolute masterpieces: le Brun’s portrait of Jabach.
People standing in this gallery will see the Le Brun portrait of Jabach, one of the defining
portraits of the 17th century, and they will look through that door and at the other end
they will see Jacque-Louis David’s portrait of Lavoisier and his wife.
It means that the Metropolitan will be in the position to actually show the trajectory
of French portraiture from the 17 to the 18th centuries by the two defining artists of those periods
I think this is an extraordinary achievement for the museum.