Jacques de LAJOUE (1687-1761) - attributed, Pair of paintings - Landscape with ruins

oil, board; 35.5 x 47.5 cm (size of each work);
one of them marked with a collection number on the face in red paint p. d.: 1746;
(after conservation; contemporary frames modeled on frames from the royal collection, gilded with gold flakes).
From the collection of King Stanislaw Augustus, Nos. 1746 and 1750 (No. 1750 - lost during conservation); paintings listed in the inventory of the royal collection with the painter's name: Podwins, now attributed to the artist Jacques de Lajoue. In the 1816s sold, listed in the inventory, to Mr. M. Blazowski.
Lit. Tadeusz Mankowski, Galerja Stanisława Augusta, Lviv, 1932, pp. 391-392.

During the reign of Stanislaw August Poniatowski (1632-1798), the Royal Castle in Warsaw was the official royal residence and seat of the Sejm, while the Royal Baths Park was the private
residence of the monarch. Stanislaw August, as an enlightened ruler, wanted to create a unique painting gallery in the Palace on the Isle with artistic qualities appropriate to the time,
ideological and representative. As the monarchy was not hereditary, King Stanislaus II Augustus (1764-1795) did not have previously accumulated historical collections of artworks
of art, if there were any, they were often the private property of his predecessors.
The basis for building the royal gallery was the few works remaining in the Warsaw Castle, a collection of works purchased from Kasper Lubomirski along with the Ujazdów estate. The
selection of the remaining paintings was supervised by Marcello Bacciarelli, who presented the king with a written program for the creation of an art gallery. The collection was to include representative former significant
schools of painting, as well as current trends and tendencies. Thus, the royal collection included works by the masters Saint Jerome by Leonello Spada, The Girl in the Picture Frame and The Scientist at the
Rembrandt's lectern, The Fiddler and the Lady by Philip van Dijk, Diana and Acteon by Ary de Visa, Portrait of a Young Woman with a Rose by Pieter Cornelisz van Slingelandt, Portrait of the Duchess of Santacroce by Angelique
Kauffmann. In 1795, the royal collection numbered more than 2,400 works.
Stanislaw August Poniatowski, leaving for Grodno in 1795, took part of the collection with him. The remaining items, after his death in 1798, were inherited by Prince Joseph Poniatowski, who
was forced to sell the royal collection. Some of them, through Prince Joseph's mother, Maria Teresa Tyszkiewicz, ended up in the hands of Tsar Alexander I, who purchased the Łazienki
Royal Baths along with its furnishings in 1817.
The Gallery of Stanislaw August, compiled by Tadeusz Mankowski, is an inventory of the works of art in the royal collection with later annotations of the fate of the
of individual paintings. From this, one can learn that the paintings on offer were sold on July 31, 1816 to a certain Mr. M. Blazowski, and, for example, a work by Jean-
Honoré Fragonard's Stolen Kiss was in the gallery of the Royal Baths until 1895, and was then transferred to the St. Petersburg Hermitage. The offered pair of paintings,
listed in the inventory under entries 1746 and 1750, was attributed by its authors to the painter Podwins. Today, the authorship of both small but atmospheric compositions
are attributed to the French landscape painter, author of court scenes in a park setting with a motif of Renaissance architecture, Jacques de Lajoue.