Scene from “Lucile”
Framed: 18 1/4 × 22 1/8 × 1 7/8 inches (46.36 × 56.2 × 4.76 cm)
One Hundred Drawings and Watercolours dated from the 16th century to the present day, Stephen Ongpin Fine Art, Riverwide House, London, Winter 2013–2014, no. 8, as by Etienne Aubry, as The Offending Son (Le fils fautif).
Private collection, France;
Purchased from Ader Picard Tajan, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, as by François Guérin, by Philip Harari and Derek Johns, Ltd., London, in half shares with P. and D. Colnaghi, London, 1985–May 10, 1996 [1];
Purchased from Colnaghi by Allan J. Katz (b. 1947) and Nancy E. Cohn (b. 1947), Kansas City, MO, May 10, 1996–February 24, 2022 [2];
Given by Allan Katz and Nancy Cohn to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 2022.
NOTES:
[1] See email from Derek Johns, Derek Johns Fine Art, to Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, NAMA, January 21, 2022, NAMA curatorial files. Johns acquired the painting from a sale in Paris (no catalogue/date), although he recalled that it was 1985. At the time, the painting was attributed to François Guerin. The late Greuze scholar, Anita Brookner (Courtauld), subsequently attributed the picture to Aubry.
Stephen Ongpin, who worked for P. and D. Colnaghi, New York, from 1986 to 1996, and then at the firm’s London gallery from 1996 to 2006, remembered that the sale was at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris and operated by the auctioneers Ader-Picard-Tajan, although he thought it was between 1993 and 1995. See email from Ongpin to Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, NAMA, December 15, 2021, NAMA curatorial files.
[2] Cohn and Katz offered the painting for sale at Old Master Paintings Part II, Christie’s, New York, January 31, 2013, lot 286, as by Etienne Aubry, Le Fils Fautif; and at Old Master Drawings, Sotheby’s, New York, January 30, 2019, lot 74, as by Etienne Aubry, The Offending Son (Le Fils Fautif), but it failed to sell both times.
One Hundred Drawings and Watercolours dated from the 16th century to the present day , exh. cat. (London: Stephen Ongpin Fine Art and Guy Peppiatt Fine Art, Ltd., Winter 2013), 10, (repro.), as by Etienne Aubry, as The Offending Son (Le fils fautif) .
Old Master Paintings Part II: Property from the Château de Dampierre, France; Property from the collection of Charles and Nonie de Limur, San Francisco; Property from the collection of Nancy Cohn and Allan Katz (New York: Christie’s, January 31, 2013), 80, as by Étienne Aubry, Le fils fautif .
Old Master Drawings (New York: Sotheby’s, January 30, 2019), l18, as by Étienne Aubry, The Offending Son (Le fils fautif).
Glynnis Napier Stevenson, “Etienne Aubry, Scene from “Lucile”, ca. 1775,” catalogue entry in French Paintings, 1600–1945: The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024), https://doi.org/10.37764/78973.5.303.5407.
