Pierre-Antoine DEMACHY (Paris, 1723 – 1807)

Provenance:
• France, Private Collection.

Exhibition:
• Probably Salon of 1793, La Colonnade du Louvre & ses Environs, ornés de Figures. Point de Vue pris du côté de la rue d’Angiviller, under no. 109 [The Colonnade of the Louvre and its Surroundings embellished with Figures. Point of view taken from beside the Street of Angiviller]

Bibliography:
• Françoise Roussel-Leriche and Marie Pętkowska Le Roux, Le témoin méconnu: Pierre-Antoine Demachy, 1723-1807, [exh. cat.], Lambinet Museum, Magellan et Co, Paris, 2014.
• Jean-Pierre Babelon, La Vie quotidienne à Paris dans la seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle, [exh. cat.], Museum of the History of France, National Archives: Society of Friends of the Archives, Paris, 1973.
• Félix Lazare, Louis Lazare, Dictionnaire administratif et historique des rues de Paris et de ses monuments (extracts of Letters patent), Félix Lazare, Paris, 1844.

The son of a journeyman carpenter, Pierre-Antoine Demachy developed his innate ability for drawing and perspective under Giovanni Niccolo Servandoni, decorator and architect established in Paris since 1724. As opposed to his contemporaries Joseph Vernet (1714-1789) or Hubert Robert (1733-1808), Pierre-Antoine Demachy found nothing interesting in narrative landscapes or imaginary ruins emerging from a mixture of French education and Italian experience. The artist was a fervent defender of the city of Paris where he was born, lived, and died in 1807. As both an observer of daily life and an architectural and landscape painter, Demachy found his main source of inspiration in this city. Approved for the Academy in 1755 and then received as a painter of architecture three years later, Demachy exhibited in the Salon until 1802.

Urban development constituted one of the great 18th century phenomena. The large cities experienced unprecedented demographic expansion which led to notable architectural transformations. In Paris, the Louvre quarter experimented in big changes. In the second half of the 18th century, Demachy lived in the palace area and in striving rigorously to render the view in front of him, he gave witness to daily life as it appeared before his eyes. The artist especially appreciated the view of the square of the Louvre which was simultaneously an architectural and historic edifice, a royal square, and a meeting place. He produced body-colors and oils on paper of it, as well as about twenty paintings before, during, and after the clearance of buildings in front of the colonnade.

When Louis XIV abandoned the Louvre to live at Versailles, a microcosm gradually settled into the enclosure. Seedy joints and publicans moved in and soon Minister Pontchartrain complained that “the courtyards of the Louvre are used for the most infamous prostitution and debauchery.” After such licentiousness, the Marquis of Marigny, Superintendant of the King’s Buildings, gave orders in 1758 for work to clear a space in front of the palace and thus force the population, such as the people depicted in the foreground of our picture, to move back from it. This first stage of terracing led to the open square of the Louvre that we know today.
A historic piece of evidence, our picture depicts the square before the last buildings were totally destroyed in the last years of the 18th century. On the right side of the composition, it is still in fact possible to perceive some of the dwellings which formed the cloister of the church of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois and part of the Hôtel du Petit-Bourbon (ill. 1). The Carnavalet Museum in Paris conserves another painted work by the artist taken during the work of clearing the square to let part of the Louvre colonnade appear (ill. ).
Demachy was careful to depict the architectural edifices as accurately as possible. In the background of the composition, from right to left can be detected the Parisian monetary workshop connected with the Crown, today the Paris Mint, followed on the left by the College of Four Nations whose dome dominates the Seine and which today houses the seat of the Institute of France. Further back, the two towers of Saint Sulpice Church appear, and then those of the Abbey of Saint Germain des Près. Until 1820, the abbey’s transept was flanked by two towers which were higher than the bell tower over the entrance porch. After much mutilation suffered during the Revolution, the two towers which had become too unstable and risked collapsing were torn down.
In 1793, Demachy exhibited “The Colonnade of the Louvre & its Surroundings, embellished with Figures. Point of View taken from the side of the rue d’Angiviller,” whose architectural description corresponds to the point of view chosen for our work. Created in 1780, the rue d’Angiviller was situated in the former 4th arrondissement of Paris and disappeared with the creation of the Rue de Rivoli in 1854.
An excerpt from the letters patent describes this transformation:

“Louis, etc…, wishes and pleases what follows: at the expense of Sirs Navau and Company, a street will be opened [which will be] 24 feet wide whose alignment will be straight and the two sides parallel, on the land which belongs to them, between the rue des Poulies and that of the Oratory. It will be named the rue d’Angiviller, and its entrance will be at one end of the corner of said Rue des Poulies and the square of the Louvre Colonnade, and the other in the Rue de l’Oratoire, as close as possible to this Saint-Honoré, etc. Given at Versaille, the 12th day of the month of May in the year of grace 1780 and in the seventh of our reign. Signed Louis.”

On the right in our picture, part of a wall can be seen which is topped with trees. It is the garden of Angiviller’s private mansion situated at the end of the street. Taken from a wider angle 17 years later, Victor-Jean Nicolle’s work depicting the Colonnade of the Louvre makes it possible to grasp the height and scale of the terrace (ill. 3). Built facing the Louvre in 1745 for Charles Claude Flahaut de La Billarderie (1730-1809), Count of Angiviller (1754), the mansion which acted as an annex to the house of the Pères de l’Oratoire (Fathers of the Oratory), then had artists’ studios during the First Empire before becoming the city office of the former 4th arrondissement.
Our work shows the painter’s skill in rendering the minutest architectural details and confirms his gift as a draughtsman, as well as his ability in rendering carefully studied light so that it emphasizes and flatters the architecture of the Palace of the Louvre.
Demachy’s oeuvre forms a veritable documentary tool for historians. Depictions of the clearance of the Louvre Colonnade (between 1758 and 1793) and views of the palace make up most of his oeuvre. In addition to architectural vision, the painter illustrated daily life at the end of the century and the opposition which existed between the city and the court exiled to Versailles. In Paris, the streets swarmed with philosophers, encyclopaedists, literary men, artists, public figures, artisans and merchants of all kinds. Geographically the Louvre constitutes the heart of the city, a place of transactions and the effervescence of life independent of the distant and strict etiquette of Versailles.

M.O.
transl. chr