The Fortune Teller

(Jean Baptiste Le Prince)

Related Works: Painting, exhibited at the Paris Salon, 1775, no. 36 as Un Necromancien, the property of the Marquis de Poyanne. The painting cannot be identified securely with either the exhibited version or the other versions of the composition; Painting, Visit to a Palmist, oil on canvas: 78 by 66 cms., signed Le Prince, Leningrad, Hermitage (inv. no. 5645); Painting, The Necromancer, oil on canvas: 77 by 63.5 cms., indistinctly signed on the document, c.r., L. Prince, in London, National Gallery – the rather hard treatment would suggest studio assistance; Painting (which may probably be identified with the London version), was lent by C(harles?) Towneley to Leeds, in 1868 (no. 399).

The exotic world of Russia and the East had been open to western artists for little more than half a century when LePrince was summoned to Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great’s last surviving child, the Empress Elizabeth, in 1758. The Russian capital was a westward looking city and, at the upper ends of society, there was a conscious attempt to mimic French manners and fashions, while both the Empresses Elizabeth and Catherine the Great avidly collected western art. Outside Saint Petersburg life was still largely unchanged, despite the thin veneer of western civilization which had been forcibly grafted onto this barbaric people by the powerful will of the Czarina’s father. The Russian peasants portrayed in Le Prince’s Siberian drawings, fantasy paintings and multi-figured landscape must have seemed very exotic, therefore, to sophisticated western Europeans. The pictorial records of Russian provincial life with which the artist returned in 1765 fascinated the sophisticated French and proved attractive to eighteenth century collectors.

One of the most popular of Le Prince’s Russified subjects, this work combines the influence of his master Francois Boucher, especially in the portrayal of the female figure, and that of the Northern school, in the refined Rembrandtesque palette. Critics at the Salon of 1775 remarked particularly on the contrast between the rich fabrics and somewhat primitive interior. The French were unaccustomed to the apparent contradiction of the luxurious costumes worn by non-Europeans and their seeming lack of interest in the decorative arts. The figures of the young couple were used by Le Prince in a popular tapestry cartoon and can also be found reproduced on Sevres porcelain. Here the young lovers move in the fantasy world of the rococo, where ugliness and poverty are eternally absent and only good fortune is foretold.

Provenance: Probably the painting in the collection of the Prince de Chalais in 1785 when it was engraved by Hellman; Countess de la Ferronayes, sale, Paris, April 12, 1897, lot 13 (Lugt 55256); Achille-Fould Collection; Sale, Paris, Hotel Drouot (Libert Castor), June 6, 1984, lot 10; Stair Sainty Matthiesen; Private Collection, New York.

Literature: M. le comte de la Billarderie d’Angiviller, Explication des peintures, sculptures et gravures de messieurs de l’Academie royale dont l’exposition a ete ordonnee, suivant l’intention de Sa Majeste, Paris, 1775; M. le comte de …., Observations sur les ouvrages exposes au Salon du Louvre, Paris, 1777; M. Mercure/M. Terburg/M. Teniers, La lanterne magique aux Champs Elysees au Entretien des Orients Peintres sur le Salon de 1775, Paris, 1775; Entretien sur l’exposition des tableaux de l’annee 1775, Paris, 1775; Mercure de France, Exposition des peintures, sculptures et gravures de messieurs de l’Academie royale de peinture en 1775, Paris, 1775, p. 729.

Exhibited: Philadelphia (Rosenbach Museum and Library), Pittsburgh (Frick Art Museum) and New York (Frick Collection), Drawings by Jean-Baptiste LePrince for the Voyages en Siberie, Oct. 17, 1986 – June 14, 1987, no. 39, ill.; New York, Stair Sainty Matth