Louis-François Cassas (Azay-le-Ferron 1756-1827 Versailles)
The remains of the Temple of Jupiter and the Great Court at Baalbek, Lebanon
pen, ink and watercolour on laid paper
61.6 x 93.3cm (24 1/4 x 36 3/4in).
Footnotes:
Provenance
In the collection of the present owners since the 1980s

In 1784 Louis-François Cassas accompanied the Comte de Choiseul-Gauffier, French Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, on his travels to Constantinople. He travelled through the Middle East to Aleppo, Antioch, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Cyprus and Egypt and a pictorial account of his journey, Voyage pittoresque de la Syrie, de la Phoenicie, de la Palestine, et de la Basse Egypte, was published in Paris in 1799. Cassas reached Lebanon, and specifically the Baalbek complex of Roman temples and ruins, in June or July 1785, a site most likely known to Western travellers though the drawings and engravings of Robert Wood from his trip to Syria and Greece in the 1750s (see R. Wood, The ruins of Balbec, otherwise Heliopolis in Coelosyria, London, 1757). Cassas wrote to the ambassador 'I have drawn and measured the main monuments which yield in no way to the beautiful antiquities of Rome by the grandeur, nobility and purity of architecture (see: 'Letter to Ambassador' in A. Gilet, Im Banne der Sphinx, exh. cat., 1994-5, p.159) and his painstaking attention to detail provides a remarkably accurate archaeological survey of the area.

Like many 18th century view painters, Cassas used sketches he had made during his travels to work up into finished pictures once he had returned home. Itinerant Grand Tourists were his main clientele, and they would order from him the views that for them best represented the exotic - and in those days inaccessible - locations to which he had travelled. Consequently a number of his most successful subjects were repeated several times, a certain indicator of their contemporary popularity; a similar version of the present watercolour was sold at Christie's, Paris, 26 March 2014, lot 120.

On 15 September 1787, the German poet Goethe wrote in a letter: 'Cassas' work is extremely beautiful. It made me think of a lot of things I'd like to tell you.' Two days later, writing in his journal, he described the drawings he had seen in great detail. Gérard-Georges Lemaire, who devotes a whole chapter on Cassas and Goethe in his treatise The Orient in Western Art, notes that 'Cassas' drawings are remarkable for their freshness and their lightness of touch; they have the spontaneity of his original sketches. His paintings are also very distinctive. He handles the picturesque deftly. His skill lay in his ability to render the architecture and costumes with a meticulous attention to detail that vividly evokes, for western eyes, the exotic character of the people and events depicted' (see: G.G. Lemaire, The Orient in Western Art, Könemann, 2005, p. 82).

In the two large scale watercolours by Cassas offered in this sale (lots 73 and 74), the artist conveys, through realistic detail and a highly finished quality, a visual sense of history, people and places, helping the viewer to fathom these far off lands.