Claude Michel Hamon Duplessis (Versailles, 18th century), Pair of paintings with knights

Claude Michel Hamon Duplessis (active in Versailles from 1791 to 1799)
Signed one lower right, the other lower left ''M. h. Duplessis''

Pair of paintings
Knight near an inn / Camp with tent and travellers

Oil on panel (27 x 37 cm – Framed 55 x 45 cm.)

Provenance: Christie's, Paris, auction 14/09/2016, lot 50, estimate €6.000 – €8.000 (see details)
D25-143 € 6.700 request information

This is a pair of landscapes with figures of knights and travellers, executed in oil on panel, signed by the painter Claude Michel Hamon Duplessis, active mainly in Paris around the second half of the eighteenth century and specifically documented in Versailles from 1790 to 1799.

One painting depicts a distinguished knight, wearing a bright red cloak and riding a white horse, stopping near an inn: he points with his hand to a building in the distance, perhaps the place he is headed, as if asking the woman with the child for directions.

The second painting shows two tents in a landscape. One of them, with a hanging wreath, is identified as a typical field inn, used to entertain and supply the knights. Opposite, three men are unloading food from a wagon, and to the side are empty supply baskets, along with farmers with their livestock.

The brilliant quality of the color, the accurate and fluid application, the richness of detail, the smoothness of the painted surface of these works, in an excellent state of preservation, are typical characteristics of Duplessis's best works. Specialized in scenes of this kind, often animated by knights, soldiers or travellers stopping, the author's style, with its Italianate taste, is also influenced by Flemish examples, in a blend that was very successful in 18th-century Paris.

His works exhibit characteristics of notable elegance, and his compositions particularly reflect the influence of Philips Wouwerman (Haarlem, 1619 – 1668), as can be seen from the catalogue of his works; see for example those preserved in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg (see B. Schumacher, Philips Wouwermans (1619-1668), the horse painter of the Golden Age, Doornspijk 2006, n. A 459, vol. 2, fig. 72).

Works by the painter are found in the French museums of Besançon (Outskirts of a Camp) and Bayeux (On the Banks of a Flanders Canal).

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

The works are sold complete with two attractive wooden frames and are accompanied by a certificate of authenticity and a descriptive iconographic sheet.

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