Architectural Capriccio by Jean-Baptiste Lallemand (1716 - 1803)

At first glance, this attractive genre scene by Jean-Baptiste Lallemand is an enigma. What is the point of depicting Dijon's Notre-Dame church in the background of a harbor landscape?

The presence of a second sheet of paper (enlarging the scene to the right) gives us the key. The artist first depicted a scene of Dijon daily life (probably during his stay in his native town between 1770 and 1773), then completed his drawing by adding a still life (barrels and marine anchor) to the foreground, opening the composition wide to a maritime horizon, thus transforming a genre scene into a truly virtuoso architectural capriccio.

1. Jean-Baptiste Lallemand, an 18th-century “paysagiste dijonnais” (landscape painter from Dijon)

It was under this title that the only monographic exhibition devoted to the artist was held at the Musée de Dijon in 1954. The notice written by Pierre Quarré, the curator at the time, gives us a few biographical details about the artist, whose life is still relatively unknown.

Jean Baptiste Lallemand was born in Dijon in 1716, where his father was a dressmaker. Moving to Paris around 1740, his artistic training seems to have been largely self-taught, but he completed it in 1747 by going to Italy (perhaps in the company of the painter Jean Barbault), where he stayed for several years and specialized in landscape and seascape painting. He became a member of the Académie de Saint-Luc in Paris in 1751 and returned to Dijon for a few years in 1770, where he became a member of the jury of the Ecole de Dessin founded in 1766.

It was during this stay in Dijon that he began his collaboration on the illustration of the Description générale et particulière de la France, an initiative of Benjamin de La Borde, which led to the publication in 1784 of the Voyage Pittoresque de la France, in which his drawings were reproduced in engraving. Within the Destailleurs collection, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France houses many landscapes created by Lallemand to illustrate this Voyage Pittoresque, most of them in watercolor, like the one we are presenting here. The View of Dijon (6th photo of the gallery), in which we recognize the characteristic steeple of Notre-Dame church in the background, is part of this collection.

Lallemand travelled to England in 1773, where he exhibited at the London Society of Artists, and frequently returned to Italy. Settled in Paris (where he lived until his death in 1803), Lallemand was an attentive chronicler of the French Revolution.

2. The metamorphosis of an artwork

In his notice on the artist, Pierre Quarré emphasized the quality of Lallemand's drawings enhanced with wash or watercolor, noting that "he often achieves without hesitation that delicacy and accent of joyful fantasy which bring him so close to the great masters of the period". We feel that the architectural capriccio we are presenting fully deserves this praise. It also offers an unexpected feature: the artist began by depicting a genre scene of Dijon daily life, which he later completed and enlarged to transform it into a harbor scene.

The main subject of this genre scene is the cart on which several porters are working. It is highlighted by the foreground, against the light, of a group formed by a woman seated among crates and a man contemplating the main scene, smoking a long pipe, with a dog sitting at his feet.

In the background, we recognize the characteristic facade of Dijon's Notre-Dame church, which is depicted with great precision, as evidenced by the view taken from Aristide Guibert's 1859 Histoire des Villes de France (last photo of the gallery). Pierre Quarré noted that Lallemand was "scrupulous in his descriptions of Romanesque and Gothic buildings".

The presence of this characteristic Dijon church is obviously incongruous in a harbor environment. A close examination of our drawing reveals the artist's intervention in transforming this urban scene: the bell tower appearing in the distance between the two porters, the boats and the representation of the water on the right, but also the whole still life composed of planks, ropes, barrels, a crate and an anchor seem to have been added to the original drawing! This radical change explains why the artist had to enlarge his composition on the right with a new sheet to rebalance it and open it up to a marine horizon reminiscent of Claude Vernet's series of French ports executed between 1754 and 1765.

In the image shown in the gallery (5th photo), we have drawn this imaginary dividing line between the original urban genre scene and the harbour details that seem to have been added in a second stage.

The result, which turns our leaf into a kind of architectural capriccio combining real and fictional elements, is very appealing and fully demonstrates Jean-Baptiste Lallemand's great skills as a landscape and genre painter.

3. Framing

Our drawing has been framed in an important Louis XV period “pastel” carved giltwood frame. Its concave profile is adorned with a chain of cabochons at back edge and enriched gadrooning at top edge. The sight edge is bordered by a frieze of acanthus leaves and C-shaped scrolls.

Main bibliographical references

Jean-Baptiste Lallemand paysagiste dijonnais du XVIIIème siècle - catalogue of the exhibition held at the Musée de Dijon in 1954 (with a preface by Pierre Quarré)
Claude Gérard Marcus - Jean-Baptiste Lallemand 1716-1803 - published in 1994