JEAN BAPTISTE BLIN DE FONTENAY
Caen, 1653 – Paris, 1715
Flower vase
oil on canvas, cm 86×120
Magniloquent creation typical of French art between the late 17th century and the first half of the 18th, this canvas features a luxuriant still life of flowers of different colours arranged in a figured vase resting on a solid surface. Emilio Negro has proposed as author of the painting, in which “depicted with graceful elegance are recognizable tulips, anemones, cabbage roses, carnations, nasturtiums, tuberoses”, the painter Blin de Fontanay, son-in-law and follower of that Jean Baptiste Monnoyer (1636-1699) considered the leader of the French flower painters.
The scholar relates this “enjoyable still life” with paintings by the artist from the other side of the Alps as the ‘Basket with flowers on a shelf’ (Paris, Louvre Museum), the ‘Flower garland with girl and young black servant’ (Caen, Musée des Beaux-Arts) and finally with the ‘Bronze vase with flowers’ which recently appeared in the antiquarian market (Dorotheum, 13 October 2010, no. 599).
Blin de Fontanay, “artist of a vivid and at the same time scrupulous composing”, was accepted in 1687 at the Academy, becoming a painter of considerable success, with important customers, also royal, succeeding Monnoyer as flower painter at the prestigious factory of Gobelins. At the end of his career, remembers Negro, “he was gratified by the King of France with a pension and a dwelling at the Louvre”.