Étude de vaches

Original drawing in ink and watercolor.
Modern frame.
Drawing made during the journey with the Marquis de Sade in 1776.
Jean-Baptiste Tierce (1737-1794), student at the École des Beaux-arts in Rouen then at the Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris, quickly distinguished himself as a landscape painter for his views of Southern France and Italy. His paintings are preserved in the Uffizi in Florence and in several French museums. When in December 1775 Sade left Rome for Naples, he was welcomed by the son-in-law of his friend Doctor Mesny, Jean-Baptiste Tierce, who at that time received commissions from Cardinal de Bernis. He found lodging for the Marquis "[who] intended to see everything [in the region], learn about everything, judge, admire, criticize, love, hate, in short to give free rein to that insatiable and passionate curiosity which led him into museums, galleries, churches, palaces and libraries, as well as into caves, vaults, catacombs, and even into the bowels of volcanoes. He was not content to contemplate works of art, ancient or modern monuments, he also observed customs, politics, religion, administration, social life. The beauty of women, worldly customs, the quality of performances, ways of eating, drinking, dressing, praying, conducting oneself in society: nothing left him indifferent. He wanted to grasp all the present and all the past of this civilization, to embrace it entirely in a single and universal vision. A gigantic program, matching his exceptional imagination, but which he no longer had to fulfill, which it was impossible for him to fulfill.
Yet such was his first ambition as a writer: grandiose, excessive. With this 'great work' in view, Sade took hasty notes, at roadsides or in inns, which he completed with notes from his correspondents Mesny and Iberti. Thus was built this monument he intended for the public, but which would not see the light of day until the twentieth century.
Jean-Baptiste Tierce collaborated closely: he reread the notes and recorded his observations in small notebooks, with numbers referring to the works described. Sade took the greatest account of them. Often, the painter accompanied him on his walks, his sketch pad in hand, drawing the buildings and landscapes they had before their eyes. A hundred of these drawings and gouaches were recently found in the Sade family archives. They give the Voyage en Italie the appearance of a true reportage." (Maurice Levert, Sade, pp. 283-284).
Provenance: Sade family archives.