French School Of The 18th Century, Attributed To Victor Jean Nicolle

French school of the 18th century, attributed to Victor Jean Nicolle
View of Rome, figures under a monumental arcade: ruins composed
pencil, pen, bistre wash and indian ink on strong paper
143 x 88 mm
Annotation “Nicolle”, in pencil, on the back of the sheet

Good state of conservation, slight foxing in the sky (see photographs)
Sold as presented, in sheet

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A drawing of remarkable mastery and vivacity, which leads to imagine a most skillful hand from the French 18th century, in the same spirit as artists like Victor Jean Nicolle (1754-1826) or Louis Jean Desprez (1743-1804). This drawing, presented at the time of acquisition with a very simple mount, had obviously not been removed from its frame for several decades. By accessing the back of the sheet, the suggestion of attribution to Nicolle was indicated in pencil and this inscription made it possible to better direct the research.

A drawing that has survived the centuries until today, as it has fascinated its successive collectors. The passage of time can be seen in the few slight foxings in the sky, but the finesse of the drawing remains the same and the viewer is quickly carried away by the overall movement of the crowd and this monumental perspective in which the rumor of these travelers resonates. admiring as much as the echo of Roman Antiquity. The very subtle repetitions, in darker Indian ink, of the tip of the brush, add charm and pictorial freedom to this view of Rome. There is both the monumentality of architecture and the pure pleasure of drawing.

The layout of this small format drawing as well as the composition, developed using a monumental arcade, is typical and very common in the works on paper of Victor Jean Nicolle. On the other hand, it is the figures, in our drawing, which seem to denote from what we know about the artist. However, the stylistic comparison with two drawings by Victor Jean Nicolle kept in the British Museum (photos 3 and 4) allows us to clarify our proposed attribution. Indeed, the drawing of small figures which are so many silhouettes traced in two rapid shapes which resemble parentheses, are found as much in the drawings of London as in ours.

There may be a certain lack of precision in the drawing, which Victor Jean Nicolle rarely neglected. Academically trained in architectural drawing, he has always drawn with the desire to take with him the perfect image of the architecture contemplated on site, to recreate it in his more accomplished compositions.

A sales catalog like that of the collection of Baroness Félix Oppenheim, at the Hôtel Drouot, on November 21, 1929, allows us to discover that small format sheets, drawn fairly quickly by Victor Jean Nicolle, were not rare. The description of the compositions as well as the techniques given for these drawings are clearly similar to our sheet. The catalog is entirely digitized at this address: https://digitalprojects.wpi.art/auctions/detail?a=67487-watercolors-and-drawings-by-vj-nicolle&media=2387845