The Cleveland Museum of Art

• Provenance
  1736-1741

  Probably Victor-Amédée, prince de Carignan [1690-1741], Paris, France

  1741-1743

  Held in trust by the Estate of the prince de Carignan

  Until 1910

  Mantacheff collection, St. Petersburg, sold to Wildenstein & Co

  Probably 1910-1928

  (Wildenstein & Co., Paris, France, sold to Henry G. Dalton)

  Probably c. 1928-1939

  Henry G. Dalton [1862-1939], Cleveland, OH, by descent to his nephew, Harry D. Kendrick

  Probably 1939-1951

  Harry D. Kendrick [1894-1958], Cleveland, OH, given to the Cleveland Museum of Art

  1951-

  The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio

  Provenance Footnotes

  1 When Pater died in 1736, two unfinished oval Seasons painted for the prince de Carignan remained in the artist’s studio.  They were claimed soon thereafter by Louis-Jacques Landrin, Carignan’s agent, as was stipulated in Pater’s scellé après décès: “le 13 août, de Louis-Jacques Landrin, avocat au Parlement…chargé de pouvoir de Son Altesse Serenss.  Monsigneur le Pce de Carignan, réclamant ‘deux tableaux sur toille de trois livres, dix sols (?), représentant les Saisons, commandés par Son Altesse au deffunt Pater, lesquels tableaux le Sr Landrin revendique,’ et se declare prêt à payer pour Son Altesse ‘ce qui peut rester dus desdits tableaux en l’état qu’ils son.’”  Carignan had four oval Seasons installed in his dining room.  In Carignan’s sales of 1742 and 1743, these are attributed to Watteau; however, according to art historian Rochelle Ziskin, they were partly—or, more likely, entirely—by Pater.  The attributions in the sale catalogues, however, should not necessarily be taken at face value: the “expert” of the sales, Pierre Testard, was clearly not an expert on works by Watteau and his followers, as there were additional misattributions and errors (e.g., Lancret was called “Nancré”) in the catalogues.   At 26 x 20 inches, the “Watteau” Seasons in the Carignan catalogues are quite close in size to Spring and its pendants (CMA's Summer (1952.540) and Winter and Fall, at the Museu Nacional, Barcelona), which are 25 11/16 x 21 1/16 inches.  It should be kept in mind that the dimensions recorded in auction catalogues from the eighteenth century were often less than precise.  That said, in her 1928 Pater catalogue raisonné, Florence Ingersoll-Smouse does not believe the Wildenstein/Mantacheff Quatre Saisons (nos. 578-581) and the Carignan Saisons (no. 567, not illustrated and with no further provenance) to be one and the same.  Even if the CMA and Barcelona Seasons were the “Watteaus” that appear in the Carignan sales, their whereabouts after those sales remain unknown. Wildenstein’s records note that Spring was formerly in the Moreton de Chabrillan collection; however, their records also include the Choiseul collection in the provenance, which we know is most likely incorrect.  Furthermore, the catalogue raisonné, combined with a tracing of pendants depicting the seasons (not necessarily attributed to Pater) throughout eighteenth/nineteenth-century auction records strongly suggests that the Chabrillan Paters (formerly in the Dubois) collection, were a separate, larger, set of pendants by Pater depicting the seasons.  In the Ingersoll-Smouse catalogue raisonné, the CMA and Barcelona pendants are nos. 578-581 (provenance: Wildenstein, “Choiseul et Mantachef”), while the Chabrillan pendants are nos. 574-577 (provenance: Dubois sale, 1785; Chabrillan sale, 1848; English collector; Mrs. J. Ashley sale, 1907).  Their current location is unknown. 

  2 Mantacheff, or Mantashev, refers to a prominent Armenian industrialist family.  It was most likely Alexander Mantacheff (d. 1911) who owned the Paters, although his son, Leon, who lived in Moscow and Paris, was also a collector (active in the 1910s).  According to the 1990 Colnaghi exhibition, the Mantacheffs believed that the four Paters were in the collection of the Duc de Choiseul, Louis XV’s minister of foreign affairs, although the reasons behind this belief are not known.  The Choiseul provenance is dubious, however, as the Paters do not appear in any contemporary account of the collection.  Neither the 1772 collection catalogue nor the 1786 collection sale include the Barcelona and CMA Paters (although there are two other sets of pendants by Pater).  Additionally, Pater’s Seasons were not engraved by Basan for the Recueil d’estampes d’apres les tableaux du Duc de Choiseul, which reproduced 124 of the approximately 160 paintings owned by Choiseul.  The Choiseul collection was extremely well-documented, so were these paintings owned by him, it is unlikely there would be no reference to them. That said, it is possible that if the paintings were still part of a decorative screen in 1772, they would not have been treated as works of art themselves and would not have been inventoried with his paintings.  Choiseul did own the a cycle of dining-room decorations by Watteau, the so-called Crozat Seasons, and so it is also possible that the probably erroneous belief that Choiseul owned the Pater Seasons comes from a later confusion resulting from his having owned Watteau’s Seasons.   

  3 Wildenstein certainly had both Spring and Summer by 1928, as both are situated with Wildenstein in Ingersoll-Smouse’s catalogue raisonné, published that year.  The catalogue of Colnaghi’s 1990 exhibition, Claude to Corot: The Development of Landscape Painting in France, which included Spring, notes that Wildenstein disclosed that Spring and Summer, as well as Autumn and Winter were acquired by Wildenstein from the Mantacheff collection in 1910.  The circumstances under which Spring and Summer remained at Wildenstein for at least eighteen years are unknown. 
• Citations
  Carignan. Catalogue des tableaux du cabinet de feu S.A.S. Monseigneur le prince de Carignan. Paris: De Poilly, 1742.

  Catalogue des tableaux du Cabinet de Feu S.A.S., Monseigneur Le Prince de Carignan. Paris: Chez de Poilly, 1743.

  Ingersoll-Smouse, Florence. Pater. Paris: Les Beaux-arts, édition d'études et de documents, 1928. p. 84, nos. 578 and 579, figs. 154 and 155

  The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Catalogue of Paintings, Part 3: European Paintings of the 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1982. Reproduced: p. 111; Mentioned: p. 110-115

  Coe, Nancy. The History of the Collecting of European Paintings and Drawings in the City of Cleveland. 1955. II, 46, nos. 6 and 7

  Inna Nemilova, "Watteau's Drawing The Alle and Pater's Spring," Soobscenija Gos, XL (1975). 20-22

  Roland Michel, Marianne. Lajoüe et l'art rocaille. Neuilly-sur-Seine: Arthena, 1984. pp. 42, 210, fig. 127

  Grasselli, Margaret Morgan, Pierre Rosenberg, Nicole Parmantier, and Antoine Watteau. Watteau, 1684-1721. Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1984. p. 146

  Wintermute, Alan, and Michael Kitson. Claude to Corot: The Development of Landscape Painting in France. New York: Colnaghi, 1990.

  Cambó, Francesc. Colección Cambó: Museo del Prado, 9 octubre-31 diciembre, 1990. [Madrid]: Ministerio de Cultura, 1990. p. 474

  Ziskin, Rochelle. Sheltering Art: Collecting and Social Identity in Early Eighteenth-Century Paris. University Park, Pa: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012.
• Exhibition History
  Claude to Corot: The Development of Landscape Painting in France, Colnaghi Gallery, New York, NY (November 1-December 15, 1990).
• Cite this Page
  {{cite web|title=Spring|url=false|author=Jean-Baptiste Pater|year=c. 1720–36|access-date=24 April 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}