Charles Antoine Coypel (1694-1752) and his studio, The game of the candle

Re-canvas of 64 cm by 58 cm
Old frame of 82 cm by 76 cm

Our painting is a studio rework of an original painted around 1730 which is now in a private collection. Given its success, the artist and his studio have produced a few other versions in different formats.
The game of the candle is the title given to this work where three ladies of a very respectable age, for whom teeth are a memory, indulge in a little game while trying all the same to extinguish a candle with a breath that is therefore difficult to direct. A young woman follows the scene with great pleasure and most certainly, a lot of tenderness.
This very beautiful work benefits from a sumptuous frame with finely chiseled decorations.

Charles Antoine Coypel (1694-1752)

Coypel was born in Paris on July 11, 1694 into a very prosperous and influential family of history painters. His grandfather, Noël Coypel, had been director of the French Academy in Rome as well as the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. Antoine Coypel, Charles-Antoine's father, received numerous commissions from the French royal family, including Philippe II, Duke of Orléans. He would also become director of the Royal Academy in 1714 and first painter to the King the following year. Philippe Coypel (1703-1777), Antoine Coypel's second son, would become valet to the King.
Charles Antoine Coypel proved himself extremely brilliant from a very young age, both for his talent as an artist and for his political and strategic skills, which allowed him to quickly rise to the highest positions in the artistic administration. Thus, he became a member of the Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1715 (at only 21 years old) and Keeper of the paintings and drawings of the crown from 1722 (at 28 years old).
He worked as an actor and playwright before devoting himself to painting. Even after his transition from live performance to the visual arts, he maintained ties with the theater, which remained an important source of inspiration throughout his career.
He received numerous religious commissions (Pilgrims of Emmaus, 1746, Paris, churches of Saint-Merri and Saint-Louis-en-l'Île, with drawing in the Louvre). His portraits (Philippe Coypel, 1732, Louvre) demonstrate his sense of observation and decorative effect.
This literate painter (the Follies of Cardenio, 1721) executed, in particular after 1740, many paintings inspired by the theater (the Dresden Tapestry, 1748-1750). But above all, as a disciple of his father, he wanted to revive the painting-expression of passions, defined by Poussin, Le Brun and A. Coypel. Hence the "dramatic" character of his work, based on the possible links between theater and life, and the importance of the paintings, whose subject is dramatized (Perseus Delivering Andromeda, 1727, Louvre; France Gives Thanks to Heaven for the Healing of Louis XV, 1744, Church of Clairvaux).
Charles Antoine Coypel lived in the Louvre Palace from the age of three, when his father received a housing patent in 1697. His family's lodgings also included at least fifteen rooms under the Grand Gallery and a studio space of three thousand square feet. He inherited his father's drawing and painting duties as First Painter to the Duke of Orléans upon his father's death in 1722. He became First Painter to the King and Director of the Royal Academy in 1747. He worked on several commissions for paintings for the Royal Palace of Versailles, and for Louis XV and his wife, Queen Marie Leczinska. He was an excellent tapestry designer. He designed tapestries for the Gobelins factory. His most successful tapestries were created from a series illustrating Don Quixote. Coypel was the first to illustrate Don Quixote in a sophisticated manner. His illustrations were painted as cartoons for tapestries, then engraved and published in a luxury folio in Paris in 1724. Coypel created twenty-eight small paintings for these tapestries over several years. Each painting served as the centerpiece of a larger space richly decorated with birds, small animals, and garlands of flowers on a patterned background. More than two hundred pieces in the Don Quixote series were woven between 1714 and 1794.
In addition to his career as a painter, Coypel wrote some forty plays between 1717 and 1747. Only Les Folies de Cardenio (1720) was published. It was performed at the Tuileries Palace in 1721. In La Poésie et la Peinture, an allegorical comedy in three acts, the artist compared the qualities of the two arts. The painter also produced works on the theme of theater, including portraits of the actresses of the Comédie-Française Charlotte Desmares and Adrienne Lecouvreur.