Abraham Ignace Bolkman (Turin 1704–1772 Paris) and Jacques de Lajoué (Paris 1686–1761)
An elegant party near a well with a palace in the background,
oil on canvas, 170 x 284 cm, framed

Provenance:
Probably commissioned by Prince Victor I Amadeo of Savoy-Carignan for the dining hall of the Hôtel de Soissons in Paris;
private collection, Spain

We are grateful to Dr. Arabella Cifani, whose in-depth certificate accompanies the present painting, for identifying the artist.

It was only recently that this large painting was identified as a work by Abraham Ignace Bolkman made in collaboration with Jacques de Lajoué. Whereas Lajoué, who painted the fountain and parts of the staffage, is a well-known artist of the French Rococo, Bolkman, who conceived the Franco-Italian landscape and painted the remaining figures, was only recently rediscovered. The few sources we know prove that he was a prolific and much valued artist in Paris around the middle of the century. He was the son of the Turin court painter Peter Maurice Bolkman, an influential landscapist of Dutch origins. Abraham was still recorded in Turin in 1725. Probably through the intervention of Jean-Baptiste van Loo, Abraham went to Paris soon afterwards, where he, like Van Loo himself, became a court painter to Prince Victor Amadeo I of Savoy-Carignan from Turin, who had come to live in Paris in 1718. Savoy-Carignan almost went bankrupt through his passion for art and the large-scale reconstruction of his town palace, the Hôtel de Soissons. He was one of the most important patrons in Paris during the first half of the century (see R. Ziskin, Sheltering Art: Collecting and Social Identity in Early Eighteenth-Century Paris, Pennsylvania, 2012).

In 1741, after the death of Carignan, Bolkman was still living in the latter’s palace, which, according to documents, was demolished in 1748: “Abraham-Ignace Bolkman peintre de feu M. le prince de Carignan, demeurant à Paris, à l hôtel de Soissons, âgé de 34 ans, ou environ” (Nouvelles Archives de l’art français, Recueil de documents inédits publiés par la Société de l’histoire de l’art français, 2nd series, vol. IV, ed. by J. Guiffrey, Paris, 1883, pp. 394–96, pp. 400ff). In 1752, Bolkman became a member of the Académie de Saint Luc and that same year received a substantial sum in payment for several landscape paintings commissioned for Princess Henrietta of France. Bolkman was also court painter to the king of Denmark, as is mentioned in a document from 1741.

The Prince of Savoy-Carignan had his dining hall decorated with “three large landscapes with figures in the style of Watteau” (cf. Rochelle Ziskin, 2012, p. 180, n. 36), none of which has so far been identified. The present painting might have been one of them. The dining hall was also decorated with a work by Lajoué. Several scholars have assumed that the figures might be by the hand of Jean-Baptiste van Loo, with whose family Bolkman lived at the Hôtel de Soissons. Alternative attributions to Pseudo-Battaglioli, Philippe Mercier, Johann Franz Greipel, and other artists from the wider circle of Watteau have been suggested.