River Landscape by night,
  • Louis Le Sueur
  • Paris 1746 - 1803
  • River Landscape by night,, 1773
  • Gouache on paper
  • signed and dated on the lower left: L. Lesueur / 1773
  • 234 × 363 mm
Provenance:
Collection Louis Le Breton (French marine painter, 1818-1866)
Collection Maugras

The landscape painter and etcher Louis Le Seuer was known primarily for his views of Paris and its vicinity. In this depiction too, we can make real parallels with historicallydocumented buildings, like the pavilion in the left foreground of this atmospheric moonlight landscape. The artist presents here the Pavillon de l’Arsenal in Paris, which was built after 1712 by the famous French Rococo architect Germain Boffrand (1667-1754). Like the pavilion in the drawing, this striking little edifice lay on the bank of the Seine near the center of the metropolis (Fig.1), which here, silhouetted in the distance, is only hinted at. It was named after the Duchesse du Maine, whose husband commissioned this luxurious belvedere as part of the expansion of the Paris Arsenal. Boffrand was soughtafter as an architect and interior designer even outside of France. He thus worked, for example, with Balthasar Neumann on the decoration of the Würzburg Residence in 1724.