JEAN RANC Montpellier 1674 - Madrid 1735 - Lot 42

JEAN RANC Montpellier 1674 - Madrid 1735 Portrait of a man 80.5 x 64.5 cm (faded; restorations) Jean Ranc was the son of a Montpellier painter, and so apprenticed with his father. In the same studio, the painters Gaspard Rigaud, Hyacinthe's brother (in 1678) and Jean Raoux (in 1693) were taken on as apprentices. By the age of thirteen, he was qualified as a "master painter" (document dated May 22, 1687), and in 1696 he joined the Paris studio of Hyacinthe Rigaud (a friend of his father), where he sketched a copy of Portrait de Louis XIV en armure (now in the Herzog Anton-Ulrich Museum in Braunschweig). The following year, he unsuccessfully entered the competition for the Prix de Rome, and continued to work in Rigaud's studio until 1699. In 1700, he was admitted to the Académie, in the portrait genre; he was accepted in 1703, on presentation of portraits of Nicolas de Platte Montagne and François Verdier (Versailles); he also applied for the title of history painter, and was asked to submit another reception piece. In the end, he was not accepted in this category. In 1715, he married the daughter of Gaspard Rigaud, who had been a pupil of his father. In 1719, he painted the equestrian portrait of the Regent (lost), which was admired by the court, and in the same year completed the portrait of the young Louis XV (Versailles). He also took part in the illustration of Antoine Houdart de La Motte's Fables nouvelles, and the following year was visited by the Venetian Rosalba Carriera. His life changed in 1722, when Cardinal Dubois chose him to go to Spain, where he arrived in October and immediately painted portraits of the King and Queen. The following year, he was commissioned to find copyists for these official portraits, and began work on the large portrait of the royal family. In 1726, Hyacinthe Rigaud (godfather of one of Ranc's children, and the artist's uncle) bequeathed him his hand studies in his will (in 1731, a new will concerned prints after Le Brun, after Rigaud's portraits, as well as a portfolio of Rigaud's portrait drawings, and a portfolio of academies by various masters). In 1729, he painted portraits of the children of Philip V, on the occasion of a Spain-Portugal wedding, and traveled to Lisbon to paint the family of John V of Portugal (Spanish royal collections). In 1734, he painted the decorations for the Galeria del Ponente in Madrid's Alcazar, inaugurated by the royal couple on December 13, but destroyed by fire (like most of the palace) on the night of December 24-25. He died in Madrid on July 1, 1735. The portrait, with the sitter in bust, face on but shoulders slightly to one side, follows the codes of the generation of Hyacinthe Rigaud, Nicolas de Largillière and François de Troy. The attribution to Jean Ranc was confirmed, after direct examination of the work, by Mr. Stephan Perreau, author of a thesis Jean Ranc (1674-1735), peintre et décorateur - De Paris à Madrid, un Montpellierain au service des Bourbons, defended in 2022: he will include it in his catalog raisonné under number P. supp.1. According to him, our painting should be dated around 1697-1699, i.e. at the very end of Rigaud's apprenticeship, whose codes he adopts here. Comparison with a portrait in the Château-musée de Seneffe (Belgium) confirms this attribution and dating, the artist having reused certain details from one portrait to another, such as the tie here. This practice of reusing certain parts was common, as the artist had a repertoire of models for hands, ties, armor, wigs, etc. (Rigaud bequeathed his hand studies to Ranc in 1726). We would like to thank Mr. Stephan Perreau for his help in attributing this painting.