During the Eighteenth Century in France, there was a revival of interest in the work of seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish painters such as Samuel van Hoogstraten (1627-78), Cornelis Brize (1621/22-65/70), Cornelius Norbertus Gijsbrechts (active 1657-1675), and Wallerant Vaillant (1623-1677), artists who had evolved a distinctive manner of trompe-l’œil still-life in which a series of seemingly unrelated objects, or quodlibet [pocket-emptyings], are displayed against a feigned wooden panel.1 The obvious delight that these virtuoso performances occasioned in spectators was often expressed in terms of the tried and true confusion between Art and Nature, which goes back to the Ancients. When, for example, Ferdinand III was given a trompe-l’œil painting of a print attached to a board by the Strasbourg artist Sébastien Stoskopff (1597-1657), the Emperor tried to remove the print and then laughed at the deception.2 The celebrated Président de Brosse had a similar reaction in 1737 before the elaborate cut-out trompe-l’œil by Antonio Forbera, which was housed in the Chartreuse at Villeneuve until the French Revolution.3
Most of the practitioners of this form of still-life in eighteenth-century France were provincials, although artists of the calibre of Jean-Etienne Liotard (1702-89) and Louis-Léopold Boilly (1761-1845) did not hesitate to use it from time to time. The most talented and individual of these painters was Gabriel Gresly who was born near Besançon in the Franche-Compté to a family of glass-makers.4 He probably studied with P.-A. Fraichot (1690-c, 1763), a local painter, whose daughter he married. Gresly met with discreet success amongst middle class and aristocratic patrons, most notably the Comte de Caylus though he never lived for any length of time in Paris. He also painted more conventional still-lifes with vases of flowers and bowls of fruit5, as well as genre scenes.
This witty set of Trompe-l’oeil paintings is a perfect example of Gresly’s work in the genre. Displayed against the artist’s characteristic feigned pine panels are four engravings bearings legends and signatures6. They appear to have been tacked carelessly with pins; a feather pen has been slipped behind one, a pencil behind another, and a letter behind a third, with part of two words visible: Secret/ Le. The prints would appear to illustrate the theme of Education and the tears, marks, splodges of sealing wax and cut out pieces of playing cards are all details suggestive of the presence of an untidy, distracted student.
1. For trompe-l’œil still-life see: M. Milman, Trompe-l’Œil Painting, 1983, London & C. Brusati, “Capitalizing on the Counterfeit:Trompe-l’Œil Negotiations” in Still-Life Paintings from the Netherlands 1550-1720, exhibition catalogue [Amsterdam –Cleveland], edited by A. Chong and W. Kloek, 1999, pp. 59-72 and 221-33, cat. nos. 52-56.
2. Ibid., p. 64 and fig. 8.
3. M. & F. Faré, La vie silencieuse en France.La nature morte au XVIIIe siècle, Paris, 1976, p. 406 & Milman, op. cit., p. 92, illustrated on p. 93.
4. Faré, op. cit., pp. 344-49, figs. 571-80.
5. Ibid., p. 349, figs. 571 and 579.
6. A Trompe-l’Œil Still-Life (ibid., fig. 576) in a private collection shows a feigned landscape print by Perelle, another of Gresly’s favourites, fixed at the corners by nails and bits of playing cards.
