CHARLES-AMÉDÉE-PHILIPPE VAN LOO
(Turin 1710-1795 Paris)
Portrait of an "Unlikely Couple" (The Artist and his Mother?)
Signed and dated, lower left, twice: 'Amedee Van Loo 1763' (Outer frame) and 'C . A . P . Van Loo 17..' (Inner frame)
Oil on canvas
79.5 x 63.5 cm
Provenance:
Private Collection, Germany.
Charles-Amédée-Philippe ("Amédée") Van Loo was born into a dynasty of painters who were active throughout Europe for more than two centuries.1 Amédée Van Loo was trained in his father's studio, raised in Italy, southern France, and Paris, where he won the Prix de Rome in 1738. In 1748 he became Painter to Frederick II "the Great" in Berlin, and stayed in Germany until 1758, when the Prussian Monarch gave him permission to return to France as long as the (Seven Years) war lasted. By 25 August 1763 he was again in Berlin working for Frederick and his court.2 After his definitive return to Paris in 1769, Amédée Van Loo continued to receive an annual pension from Frederick. He exhibited regularly in the Salons until his death in 1795.
This image of an a middle aged man and an elderly woman in a trompe l'oeil frame is positioned at a critical moment in the artist's career and exemplifies his sense of humour, fascination with popular science, delight in visual puns, and capacity to produce sensitive intimate images. The only member of the Van Loo family who was heavily influenced by Dutch genre painting, and in particular, Van Mieris, Amédée Van Loo may have passed through Holland and visited Leyden on his way back to Berlin sometime between April and August 1763.3 A visit to Leyden, a city famous for its innovations in optics, would help to explain his increasing fascination with the subject. This portrait, which appears within a trompe l'oeil frame signed both on the imaginary frame and on the edge of the picture space, is one of the first to show him playing such games with popular science and space perception.4
In his journal, Amédée noted that as soon as he arrived in Berlin, he painted two of his children in different paintings for the Princess Amélie and they were so successful that he decided to devote himself exclusively to portraits.
This Unlikely Couple exemplifies Charles-Amédée-Philippe Van Loo's style. Working within the "Van Loo palette" learned from his father, Amédée focused on one primary color (here a deep burgundy red) and its complement (green), plus various neutral tones - white, black, beige - for his portraits. Multi-figure compositions by Amédée Van Loo often feature a central void around which hands and bodies spin. Here, the play of hands is counterbalanced by two juxtaposed foreheads which meet just above overlapping collars.
The subject itself of an Unlikely Couple was a popular genre type in 17th and 18th century Holland, however the sitters do bear strong resemblance to the Van Loo themselves. The intimacy of this image reinforces the fact that the man's gesture is a quotation of other Van Loo family and self-portraits. The family was incredibly close-knit: Amédée had to get a papal dispensation in order to marry a woman who was his first cousin on both sides, maternally and paternally, the product of three generations of inter-marriages. Identification of the sitters remains hypothetical. Not enough is known about Amédée's mother, Marguerite Lebrun Van Loo (1687 - ?) - including whether she was still alive in 1763 and what she looked like - or about his mother-in-law / aunt, Carle's sister, Marie-Catherine Van Loo (Le)Brun (1702-1762), for whom we also have no known likeness. Marguerite Lebrun Van Loo, Amédée's mother, was a painter and miniaturist in her own right, as were other Van Loo women and members of the (Le) Brun family.5 One current belief is that the painting represents a self-portrait of the artist with his mother.
1. Son of Jean-Baptiste Van Loo (1684-1745) and Marguerite Lebrun (b. 1687). The family originated in Holland
2. Recorded in his journal/account book, manuscript (private collection).
3. The Treaty of Versailles was signed in April.
4. The same year, 1763, Amédée notes in his journal (private collection) that he painted an "optical representation of the different virtues that could characterize a great King. This painting is to be seen through a special lens. All of his virtues together form a portrait of the king." This painting today is at Versailles. A rectangular bust Portrait of Frederick the Great (New Palace, Potsdam) depicts the king in a trompe l'oeil oval carved and gilded wooden frame of laurel leaves, resting on a wooden ledge. It probably dates from this period. The Magic Lantern and Soap Bubbles (both 1764, National Gallery, Washington, DC) are rectangular paintings in which the figures of the artist's children similarly overlap an oval trompe l'oeil frame. His interest in popular science is also evident in his Portrait of the Artist demonstrating a Vacuum Pump to his Wife and Family, painted in Paris between 1779 and 1782.
5. In his third marriage, Michel Brun the Elder, amateur painter and lawyer, to Catherine Van Loo, painter, was father to Michel Brun the Younger, also a painter, who married Marie-Catherine Van Loo, painter and sister to Jean-Baptiste and Carle Van Loo. The same Michel Brun the Elder, in his second marriage, was father to the painter and miniaturist Marguerite Lebrun, who married Jean-Baptiste Van Loo. Marguerite and Jean-Baptiste were parents of Charles-Amédée-Philippe Van Loo. Marie-Catherine Van Loo and Michel Brun the Younger were parents of Marie-Marguerite Lebrun, Amédée's wife. Genealogical charts and documentation are forthcoming in Christine Rolland et al., Autour des Van Loo... , Publications des Universités de Rouen et Le Havre, 2011.