Robert Gardelle

Robert Gardelle (6 April 1682 – 7 March 1766) was a portrait and landscape painter, engraver and etcher from the Republic of Geneva.[1] He studied under Nicolas de Largillière in Paris, where he distinguished himself as a portrait painter, producing also etchings of portraits and of views of Geneva.[2] Gardelle is known for both the quantity of portraits he produced and the speed with which he produced them; Cambridge University Library noted during a 1978 exhibition that Gardelle was prolific and "often painted portraits in two or three days."[3]

Biography

Gardelle was born on 6 April 1682 in Geneva, Republic of Geneva, into a family of goldsmiths, painters, miniaturists, and enamellers.[4] He was the son of Robert, a goldsmith, and Catherine Perrot, a great-granddaughter of the Huguenot minister Charles Perrot.[5] Gardelle moved to Germany around 1702, likely after training as an artist in Geneva.[4] He first settled in Kassel, under the patronage of Baron Gustav von Mardefeld, along with his older brother, Daniel, a miniaturist by trade.[4] The brothers later stayed together in Berlin, where they executed a copy of a portrait of Charles XII of Sweden, which they donated to the Geneva Public Library.[4] At the Library's request, they also copied the portrait of Erasmus painted by Hans Holbein the Younger upon their return to Kassel around 1710. Around the same time, Gardelle painted a portrait of the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel on his own, probably from life.[4]

In 1712, Gardelle married Sara Mussard in Geneva, with whom he had three children.[4] Around 1714, he settled in Paris, where he studied for about a year in the studio of portrait painter Nicolas de Largillière, whose works he copied.[4] There he met the miniaturist Jacques-Antoine Arlaud, a fellow Genevan.[4] Returning to Geneva in 1715 and now a renowned portraitist, Gardelle was invited to work in Vaud, Neuchâtel, and Bern.[4] He also painted landscapes, including four panoramic views of Geneva for Arlaud (who later bequeathed them to the Public Library), and engraved several of his own works.[4] Gardelle died on 7 March 1766 in Geneva, following a bad fall, at the age of 84.[4]

Legacy

A student or collaborator in various workshops in Geneva, Germany, and Paris, Gardelle received what could be described as a cosmopolitan artistic education.[4] Heavily influenced by the work of Nicolas de Largillière, he began producing medium-sized or life-size bust portraits in the style of the Parisian master as early as 1715.[4] The Musée d'Art et d'Histoire in Geneva possesses a collection of portraits painted by Gardelle between 1717 and 1760–65.[4] Gardelle is also known for the speed in with which worked, often taking two to three days to complete a life-size oil portrait, and the large number of commissions he accepted and executed.[4] To this day, there is no catalogue raisonné of his work; as a result, Gardelle remains little known.[4]

Selected works

References

  1. ^ In the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland he is described as having been born in Geneva, but being from Lyon, thus French. There is no indication there that he became a citizen of the Republic of Geneva, and a fortiori that he ever became Swiss. In some recent databases such as ULAN though, he is sometimes referred to as being Swiss.
  2. ^ Michael Bryan, Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers: Volume 2, D-G. Robert Edmund Graves and Walter Armstrong, eds. New York: Macmillan, 1903; pg. 215. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
  3. ^ Leigh, R. A. (1978). Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1712-1778: catalogue of an exhibition at Cambridge University Library July-September, 1978. Cambridge University Press. p. 19. ISBN 978-0-902205-31-4.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Valérie Louzier-Gentaz (1998). "Robert Gardelle (II, fils)". SIKART Lexicon on art in Switzerland.
  5. ^ Jacques Augustin Galiffe (1836). Notices généalogiques sur les familles genevoises. Vol. 3. Geneva. pp. 393–394.

Further reading

  • Dagmar Böcker: Gardelle, Robert. In: Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz
  • Auguste Bouvier: Quatre vues de Genève peintes par Robert Gardelle, Genève 1931
  • Waldemar Deonna: Le peintre Robert Gardelle 1682-1766. Impr. du "Journal de Genève", 1943
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