Born in Paris in 1737, Félix Lecomte learnt his craft under the direction of two of the most sought-after sculptors of eighteenth century France, Étienne Maurice Falconet and Louis-Claude Vassé. He was awarded the first prize for the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1758, later allowing him a scholarship to study at the French Academy in Rome. After returning to Paris, he was accepted into the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1771 thanks to a mythological marble group depicting Oedipus and Phorbas, now housed in the Louvre (see Gaborit op. cit., p. 454, RF4009). He later became a professor at the Academy in 1792. Although today, the sculptor is perhaps not as widely fêted as some of his Parisian contemporaries, Lecomte’s extant body of work tells the tale of a talented and versatile artist, working mostly in marble and terracotta and gifted in subjects ranging from religious allegory to mythological scenes to portraits. Lecomte received commissions from many prominent society figures of the period, including Madame du Barry, the ‘maîtresse-en-titre’, or royal mistress, of Louis XV for whom he created reliefs to decorate the chateau at Louveciennes and for her stables at Versailles.
Portraiture was undoubtedly where Lecomte’s greatest artistic prowess lay, and the surviving examples of works produced by him demonstrate the artist was in high demand by some of the most important and influential figures of his day. He was also often commissioned to sculpt commemorative portraits of scholars of the previous generation, including mathematician Jean le Rond d’Alembert, historian Charles Rollin and writer Fénelon. However, Lecomte’s masterpiece and most celebrated work is his portrait of Marie Antoinette that he exhibited at the Salon of 1783. Depicted at twenty-eight years old, she had been Queen of France for nine years and is shown in the full regalia appropriate to her status. She is dressed in a garment adorned with fleur-de-lis motifs symbolising her royalty and wearing an elaborate wig decorated with delicately rendered flowers held in place by a ribbon. Around her neck she wears a medallion bearing the profile of her husband Louis XVI. Lecomte’s bust is said to have pleased the queen and achieved great acclaim upon its public debut. It is now housed at Versailles but inspired many copies after its creation and throughout the nineteenth century (see Hoog, op. cit., no. 1195).
Comparison between Lecomte’s Marie Antoinette and the present bust shows an artist gifted at imbuing the life and personality of a face in marble. The careful attention to the finer details of the costume is also notable in both pieces, particularly in their lace collars which have been meticulously pierced with minute holes to replicate the effect of the material as light falls onto the stone.
The sitter for the present lot has traditionally been referred to as the philosopher and Enlightenment figure Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach. It is recorded that Lecomte exhibited a plaster bust of him at the Salon of 1789 (see Lami, op. cit. p. 46). However, there is a second bust attributed to Lecomte and described as a portrait of the baron now in the Hermitage Museum rendered in terracotta that shows an older sitter in more sombre clothing (inventory no. H.CK-1295). It would have been unusual for the artist to have produced two different busts of the same sitter and unlikely also that the two busts are of the same person given their differing facial features. It is also unclear on what information the identification of the Hermitage bust has been based. Identification aside, the present lot is an enigmatic portrait, clearly of a gentleman of note, shown with his mouth slightly open as if speaking; if not the baron, it is probable that he was another writer or philosopher of the period.
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