Three studies of the Tennis Court Oath (Serment du jeu de paume) on two sheets
Ca. 1792–1797.
Sheet 2 (7 5/8” x 12 7/16”, 194mm x 316mm) recto: grey ink and wash over graphite, verso: “2” in brown ink. Watermark: arms of Le Tellier.
Sheet 3 (7 9/16” x 12 ½”, 193mm x 317mm) recto: grey ink and wash over graphite with black chalk, verso: grey ink and wash over graphite with “3” in brown ink at upper right. Watermark: “HV&C”.
Both sheets with residue mounts at the upper corners verso. Sheet three with a crease (paper fault) at the right-hand side.
Provenance: with Franz Wilhelm Koenigs of Amsterdam as of 1940, attributed to Jacques-Louis David (Klaus Holma. David, son évolution et son style. Paris, 1940. Illustrated as pll. XVIII-XX, noting that two of the three are on the recto and verso of the same sheet); Christie’s London (as Jean-Pierre Norblin de la Gourdaine) 21 November 1996, lots 13 & 14.
The event depicted in these three pictures — which we might call 2 (recto of sheet 2), 3r (recto of sheet 3) and 3v (verso of sheet 3) — is the 20 June 1789 oath, taken on the (court) tennis court built near Versailles, that the Estates-General (that is, the three estates — the clergy, the nobility and the rest — meeting jointly) would not disband till a constitution had been adopted. The Tennis Court Oath (Serment du Jeu de paume), two dozen days before the storming of the Bastille, is the true beginning of France’s transition out of monarchy. The “jeu de paume,” often called the sport of kings, is the precursor of modern racquet sports, including squash and tennis. The doubly asymmetrical courts varied according to their location, such that the host invariably had the advantage when, as often, nobles and royals would play one another. The symbolism of hosting the popular assembly on the site that epitomizes aristocratic leisure, pleasure and power was hardly lost on the revolutionaries.
Picture 2 is the closest to David’s unfinished picture of the Oath, the design for which was the basis of widely-circulated engravings by Dominique Vivant Denon and by Jean-Pierre-Marie Jazet. At the upper left the curtains of the clerestory are buffeted by the winds of change, and a strong diagonal shadow leads directly to Jean Sylvain Bailly atop the platform proclaiming the oath. The penthouses — the roofs along three sides of the court, viewed here from the service end — establish the vantage of the artist, with Bailly’s hand meeting it at the center. A prominent group at the foot of the picture shows the rapprochement among the clergy (a Protestant and two Catholics — a Carthusian monk and a parish abbé — embrace to the viewer’s left of center), along with Robespierre, Mirabeau and other major revolutionary figures. The crowd is spread more broadly than in David’s final picture, which was never completed, but all arms and eyes point toward the raised hand of Bailly, a perspectival signature of the great master.
Picture 3r explodes the scene even further, with a vantage somewhat lower, from the side wall close to the dedans penthouse. The spectators in the clerestory and galleries take a more prominent role, doubtless indicating the widespread revolutionary spirit. Groups of several figures in the foreground adumbrate the various factions and fractures already evident; the empty chairs at the center of the foreground provide a curious void in front of Bailly. Picture 3v is quite unlike the previous, taken from the vantage of the gallery above the dedans penthouse. Here the architecture seems to swallow the figures, with the court’s tambour clearly visible right of center. A pool of light in front of Bailly — reserved from wash — allows the quickly-sketched outlines of the jurants to surge toward the sun. It is particularly on the basis of this unusual vantage that Klaus Holma (David, son évolution et son style (Paris, 1940)) believed these to be not only by David but drawn from his own presence at the oath: “Le plus extraordinaire est celui où la salle est vue d’en haut (pl. XVIII [our 3v]), ce qui pourrait faire croire que David l’a dessiné au moment même du Serment, dans la tribune. Il est toutefois plus probable que dans le cas où il aurait fait une esquisse ce jour-là, il l’aurait dessinée au crayon” (p. 58).
Dating the pictures must proceed by inference (the watermarks are not well enough known to provide a terminus post quem). Whereas the highly-finished drawing attributed to Jean-Pierre Norblin de la Gourdaine (Jan Piotr, 1745–1830), more than quadruple the size, held by the Fogg (1943.804) bears the dates 1805 and 1814, it is far more indebted to the 1805 Denon engraving, particularly distinguished by the netting above the ashlar above the grille penthouse. Sketches at The Art Institute in Chicago (1960.558R and 1960.207R)[1] show a return to the subject with more emphasis on individual portraits, doubtless emerging from the David’s fruitless efforts to solicit the original jurants to sit for him, as well as the promulgation of David’s picture through Denon, Jazet, Couché and others.
The pictures first emerged into scholarly consciousness with Holma’s 1940 dissertation, which places them with Franz Wilhelm Koenigs (1881–1941), whose Amsterdam collection of Old Masters was a particular target of Hitler’s. They were uniformly attributed to David until Virginia Lee’s two-part article on David’s Versailles Sketchbooks (The Burlington Magazine, April & June 1969), which dissociates them from the master. Still, scholars — including the estimable Harold Joachim — continued to place them in his oeuvre. Joachim’s 1974 catalogue of The Helen Regenstein Collection of European Drawings at The Art Institute, referring to our three pictures, persists in attributing them to David on the basis of their quality and autoptic variety: “the three sketches in Holma’s book can only be the work of an eyewitness [viz. David] who also happened to be a great draughtsman capable of capturing the very essence of a dramatic situation in rough sketches” (p. 114, sub no. 56)
A 1980 article in The Burlington Magazine by Philippe Bordes attributes the drawings to Norblin, albeit drawing a weak connection between the Fogg and Art Institute pictures and ours. Bordes traces the pictures to lot 19 in the auction of Norblin’s studio following his death in 1830, which is described as “Dix dessins, études pour le Serment du Jeu de Paume,” which may not include our pictures. Those well have been owned by one of Norblin’s sons, Sébastien, in whose 14 February 1885 sale lot 123 was described as one (or more) “croquis du Serment du Jeu de Paume par J.-P. Norblin” although this seems less certain. Bordes suggests Norblin’s working of the scene (the format and adjacent numeration of the sheets all but guarantees a single sketchbook) was concurrent with his development of his highly similar Proclamation of the Polish Constitution on 3rd May 1791 (the most finished version being at the National Library of Poland (R.4312/WAF.9)). It is on this basis that the pictures were sold as the work of Norblin by Christie’s London 21 November 1996, lots 13 (sheet 3) and 14 (sheet 2)
Bordes, Philippe. “David and Norblin, ‘The Oath of the Tennis Court’ and two problems of attribution” in The Burlington Magazine CXXII (1980), 569-573.
Holma, Klaus. David, son évolution et son style. Paris, 1940. Pll. XVIII-XX.
Joachim, Harold. The Helen Regenstein Collection of European Drawings. Chicago: The Art Institute, 1974. Sub no. 56.
[1] These probably are the other two sheets to which Holma refers, placing them with Wildenstein in 1940. They were sold by Wildenstein to The Art Institute in 1960.
Item #JLR0878
Price: $60,000