Jacques de LAJOÜE Paris, 1687 - 1761 Lovers with a sheep and Lovers hunting ostriches Two oil paintings forming a pendant, curved in the upper corners Signed 'Lajoüe' lower right (Small missing parts) Cupids with a sheep and Cupids hunting an ostrich, oil on canvas, a pair, signed, by J. de Lajoüe 107 x 131 cm (42,13 x 51,57 in.) Provenance: Giorgini Collection in 1960 ; Anonymous sale; Paris, Palais Galliera, Me Rheims, 21 June 1966, nos. 40 and 41; Anonymous sale; Paris, Hôtel Drouot, Mes Boisgirard et Antonini, 16 February 1972; Galerie Pardo, Paris ; Acquired from the latter by the present owners; Private collection, Paris Bibliography: 'Connaissance des Arts', June 1972, repr. Alexandre Ananoff and Daniel Wildenstein, 'François Boucher', Paris and Lausanne, 1976, vol. I, p. 197-198, no. 63/6, detail fig. 299 Marianne Roland Michel, 'Lajoüe et l'Art Rocaille', Paris, 1984, p. 193, no. P.37 and P.38, repr. fig. 75 and pl. 1 Comment: Exuberance to the point of madness is brought to a climax in these two ambitious compositions by the most rocaille of painters: Jacques de Lajoüe. We are carried away by the dynamism of these canvases, in which sculpted groups come to life: putti raise their nets, a sea-horse spits out water next to a fleeing ostrich, sleeping loves or a flask-bearer on the back of a sheep stir and refresh our gaze, but also many other senses, so absorbed are we by the scenes. Everything is irrational, nonsensical, asymmetrical and wildly imaginative: it's all rockwork! Tulips as big as putti, grapes worthy of Canaan, giant strawberries and unreal burgundy - this is the world of our prodigious artist. Accepted into the Académie Royale in 1721, Lajoüe quickly specialised in decorative paintings, which he often produced for sumptuous interiors that have unfortunately often disappeared. This is how our two paintings, which seem to have been made for door tops, ended up in the Giorgini collection in 1960, with no trace of their original purpose. The first of the illustrations in Marianne Roland Michel's fundamental monograph devoted to Lajoüe ('op. cit.'), our 'Amours chassant l'Autruche' is undoubtedly the artist's masterpiece. The ambition of the composition and the confidence of a fiery brush are on display in an unforgettable harmony of colour. For his figures, Jacques de Lajoüe was strongly influenced first by Watteau and then by François Boucher. In 'Lovers with a Sheep', we find the sleeping putto from 'The Lovers of the Harvest' (several versions) or from 'The Rape of Europa' in the Wallace Collection. In the hunting scene, the two putti pulling the net are taken directly from the 'Triumph of Priape', engraved by Duflos after François Boucher (fig. 1). Rarely has the artist surpassed himself as much as in these two pendant canvases dating from around 1740, a moment of grace and insouciance, of total freedom in the ornamental motifs where only asymmetry and imagination are in control.