Louis CARROGIS, known as CARMONTELLE (Paris, 1717 - 1806) Two fragments of transparency: The coachman Condé and his valet Orléans leading a procession of ladies in front of a theatre scene in a park and Bathilde d'Orléans and the Duc de Bourbon Condé giving their horses a drink beside a lake. Pair of gouache watercolours over pen and black ink (Edges formerly irregular and filled in at the bottom) The arrival of the procession with a theatre scene in a park and Cavaliers at the fountain, gouache watercolour, pencil and black ink, a pair, by L. Carrogis called Carmontelle 10.83 x 17.91 in. 27.5 x 45.5 cm Provenance: Probably fragments of one of the scrolls from the Carmontelle sale, Paris, 17 April 1807, lot of 11 "boxes of transparent scrolls". Private collection, Paris Germaine de Staël wrote to King Gustav III of Sweden on 9 August 1786: "I am sending VM a brochure by Carmontelle, the author of all the proverbs in the world, entitled Conversations du jour de l'an. What I found piquant about this work is its extreme truth". Carmontelle did not invent: he transcribed what he saw and heard. Thus, in the pair of watercolours shown, we see the rider in a yellow dress, on a horse with a blue saddlecloth, giving an order to a rider in a red outfit with blue braiding: this is Bathilde d'Orléans, whose colours are red and blue, married to the Duc de Bourbon Condé, whose colours are buff blue and yellow. On the other, in a carriage in these colours, perched the Condé coachmen and his valet Orléans, is a group of ladies in white dresses: she had started the fashion to match the red hunting costume of the gentlemen! Louis Carrogis, known as Carmontelle (1717-1806), was a prolific genius: Dozens of comedies and art reviews, but also a Treatise on Perspective, hundreds of watercolour portraits of all the notables who passed through the Palais Royal, the prerogative of the Dukes of Orléans in whose service he spent many years, some forty transparent paintings and more than a dozen rolls made up of these paintings following each other according to a scenario, a term he promoted: a veritable ancestor of cinema. He devoted himself to this until his death. These 3 watercolours are from one of the rolls, depicting the French Campaigns, painted between 1783 and 1787. The 2 forming a pair have been cut off at the top. These scrolls can be up to 45 metres long and vary in height from 35 to 48 cm. They were presented in an optical box, unrolled from one axis to another, and lit at the back. We would like to thank Mrs Laurence Chatel de Brancion for confirming the authenticity of these sheets through a visual examination on 17 July 2024. Louis CARROGIS, known as CARMONTELLE (Paris, 1717 - 1806) 27.5 x 45.5 cm Germaine de Staël wrote to King Gustav III of Sweden on 9 August 1786: "I am sending VM a brochure by Carmontelle, the author of all the proverbs in the world, entitled Conversations du jour de l'an. What strikes me as piquant about this work is its extreme truth". Carmontelle did not invent: he transcribed what he saw and heard. Thus, in the pair of watercolours shown, we see the rider in a yellow dress, on a horse with a blue saddlecloth giving an order to a rider in a red outfit with blue braiding: this is Bathilde d'Orléans, whose colours are red and blue, married to the Duc de Bourbon Condé, whose colours are buff blue and yellow. On the other, in a carriage in these colours, perched the Condé coachmen and his valet Orléans, is a group of ladies in white dresses: she had started the fashion to match the red hunting costume of the gentlemen! Louis Carrogis, known as Carmontelle (1717-1806), was a prolific genius: Dozens of comedies and art reviews, but also a Treatise on Perspective, hundreds of watercolour portraits of all the notables who passed through the Palais Royal, the prerogative of the Dukes of Orléans in whose service he spent many years, some forty transparent paintings and more than a dozen rolls made up of these paintings following each other according to a scenario, a term he promoted: a veritable ancestor of cinema. He devoted himself to this until his death. These 3 watercolours are from one of the rolls, depicting the French Campaigns, painted between 1783 and 1787. The 2 forming a pair have been cut off at the top. These scrolls can be up to 45 metres long and vary in height from 35 to 48 cm. They were presented in an optical box, unrolled from one axis to another, and lit at the back. We would like to thank Mrs Laurence Chatel de Brancion for confirming the authenticity of these leaves by means of a visual examination on 17 July 2024.