GUI Rochat - Private Career in The Fine Arts

Private Career in The Fine Arts

Gui Rochat has made some remarkable discoveries of disappeared and unrecognized Old Master paintings and drawings, i.e. European paintings created before circa 1800 during his activities as a private Old Master painting and drawing dealer. Examples of these are two canvases by the French/Italian master Michele DeSubleay or his Italian name Michele Desubleo, both now illustrated in color in the catalogue raisonné of his work, one of which was already recorded as lost, mentioned in his testament (cf Thieme Becker and Milantoni). And an important large oil on paper study for an unknown altar painting of the Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew by Antoine Rivalz fr:Antoine Rivalz, acquired by the Musée des Augustins in Toulouse, France, also fully illustrated and described in the catalogue raisonné on the artist. He found a superb pair of red chalk drawings by François Boucher after a painting by Francesco Solimena that formed part of the collection of Cardinal Fesch, the uncle of Napoleon, now housed in the cardinal’s museum palace in Ajaccio, Corsica. They proved a fact which was not known that Boucher on his voyage to Italy had stopped in Venice probably around 1730, where the Solimena work was then still hanging in the Baglioni collection. These drawings are now both in Ajaccio. The National Gallery of Scotland acquired a rediscovered strong oil sketch of a young woman in profile by the Flemish artist François-Joseph Navez, a pupil of Jacques-Louis David. The Montreal Museum bought in 2008 a significant small oil on copper of the Virgin and Christ by the forerunner of Canadian art, the French monk Frère Luc who entered a Quebec monastery in the late seventeenth century. A more recent discovery is that of a drawing preparatory for an engraving by Claudine Bouzonnet-Stella, the niece of the more famous French artist Jacques Stella, who was a close friend of Nicolas Poussin when both worked in Italy. Stella had bought a beautiful painting by Poussin of Venus giving arms to Aeneas which is now in the museum in Rouen and on his death it was inherited by Bouzonnet Stella, who was an excellent engraver. This drawing was done by her from the painting and squared for transfer, i.e. for being engraved. Aside from his interest in French Old Masters, Gui Rochat discovered in New York for a collector a very large and important work by the Dutch master Abraham Bloemaert fully signed and dated 1624, which was offered by Sotheby’s New York in a very dirty condition as attributed to Bloemaert’s son, a much lesser painter. The signature and date appeared after the cleaning. In the Braith-Mali museum de:Braith-Mali-Museum at Biberach in Germany is now a rediscovered small copper by the German master Johann Heinrich Schönfeld de:Johann Heinrich Schönfeld of Alexander offering Campaspe to Apelles. And the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam acquired a very charming drawing in red chalk of a young woman looking at an engraving, recognized as by the eighteenth century Dutch artist Gijsbertus van der Berg. Gui Rochat is mentioned in the literature and on the internet (see references and notes).