La fontaine du buffet d’eau, à Grand Trianon, Versailles
Watercolor over pen and gray ink and pencil, signed Marcel Lambert in black ink, lower right, 485 x 785 mm. Mounted in original carved and gilded frame, 24-5/8 x 36-1/8 x 2-3/4 in., 625 x 920 x 70 mm. The sheet, laid down on archival mat, in excellent condition, the watercolor clear and fresh.
Marcel Lambert, member of the École des Beaux-arts and awarded Grand prix de Rome in 1873, painted this spellbinding watercolor while architecte en chef des Bâtiments civils du Palais de Versailles et de Trianon. A different version from the perspective of the left quadrant appears as a full color heliogravure plate in Versailles et les deux Trianon, 1899-1900, the monumental folio Édition Nationale of Philippe Gille magnificently illustrated after Lambert’s designs. Deemed by Gille “la pièce d’architecture principale du parc de Trianon … une magnifique fontaine designée par Mansart…,” the buffet d'eau was a tour-de-force of Jules Hardouin-Mansart (1646-1708), royal architect to Louis XIV, grand-nephew of François Mansart and designer at Versailles as well of the Grand Trianon, the Galérie des Glaces, the Chapel and the Orangery. Built 1700-3, the four-tiered fountain, conceived in red Languedoc and white Carrara marble, is crowned by the gilt bronze figures of Neptune and Amphitrite flanked by lions and vases supported by tritons.
Reference:
Gille, Philippe, Versailles et les deux Trianons, Tours: Maison
Alfred Mame et Fils, [1899-1900], tome II, pp. 247-250 and pl. facing p.
248.
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Price: $7,500
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