Offered by Galerie Théorème
Nicolas Jacques Julliard (1719-1790)
Landscape with a mill in an undergrowth
between 1745 and 1755
Oil on canvas
60 x 50.5 cm (unframed) 82 x 71 cm (framed)
Frame: Louis XV period carved gilded oak with pig tails, shells and plant motifs in its original gilding (from the former Jean Tournadre collection)
The painting depicts a mill in an undergrowth. A woman emerges, holding a white cloth filled with herbs, accompanied by a child who is trying to see its contents. A man and a woman observe the scene from a window in the mill. The work is in the tradition of 18th-century picturesque landscapes, influenced by Flemish and Italian painting, in which nature serves as the backdrop for genre scenes imbued with rural charm.
The work, attributed to Nicolas Jacques Julliard, is a variant of a painting by François Boucher dated 1743 and exhibited at the Salon de l'Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. Julliard, Boucher's pupil and collaborator from 1740, was responsible for reproducing and adapting his compositions, as well as painting the master's landscapes. He was admitted to the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture on 31 August 1754 and received his diploma in 1759; his reception piece is in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Tours. He was also appointed painter to the King at the Aubusson factory in 1755 and supplied cartoons for the factory until his death in 1790.
Noah Simmons' analysis (1993) stresses that Nicolas Jacques Julliard painted several repeats of François Boucher's landscapes, confirmed by the presence in Bergeret de Grancourt's inventory of several paintings noted as adaptations of the master's compositions. Among these revivals, one of the best known is that of a landscape by Boucher from 1755, now in the National Gallery. This version, although derived from the original, features variations such as the addition of a dog, a spectator in the foreground and a more developed mill front, showing how Julliard reinterpreted these scenes according to the expectations of his commissioners.
Our painting is part of the same process of reinterpretation, but based on another model: The mill (near Beauvais) exhibited by Boucher at the Salon of 1743. This comparison between the two works highlights the way in which Julliard worked on several of Boucher's compositions at different periods, each time making modifications that demonstrate an artistic autonomy while remaining faithful to the spirit of the master.
