Galerie Charles Ratton & Guy Ladrière
About us
The Charles Ratton and Guy Ladrière Gallery has been located in the "Carré Rive Gauche" for around forty years, first on Rue de Beaune and then at 11 Quai Voltaire, but has existed for several decades on the Right Bank, at 14 Rue de Marignan.
Charles Ratton began his career in the aftermath of the Great War and quickly acquired an international reputation as a dealer and expert in both medieval and primitive art. He also worked closely with contemporary art, organizing the first "Surrealist Exhibition of Objects" in 1936.
With Guy Ladrière, the gallery's interests extend to the Renaissance and Baroque periods, including sculptures, objets d'art, as well as paintings and drawings. These interests are shared by his daughter, Sandrine, who joined the gallery in 2001.
The gallery has regularly participated in the Biennale des Antiquaires in Paris and the Foire Internationale des Antiquaires de Belgique in Brussels. For several years, it has organized exhibitions of sculptures, paintings, and drawings in its expanded premises on Quai Voltaire.
The gallery has participated in Fine Arts Paris since its inception.
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Vase à deux anses
FRANCE 16th century Black marble H: 54 cm; diam: 13 cm
Josse François Joseph Leriche (Mons, 1738 – 1812), attribué à Famille chinoise Terre-cuite avec une patine argentée ; hauteur : 26 cm ; largeur : 34 cm ; profondeur : 13 cm
Josse François Leriche was born in Mons, Belgium, in the province of Hainaut, in 1738. After training with Etienne Falconet (1716-1791), he joined the Sèvres porcelain factory in 1757 as a sculptor and held this position until 1768. He then became a modeler, and in 1780, he took the position of head sculptor for the rest of his career (until 1801). Forty-three years of service at the Royal Porcelain Factory allowed him to develop his skill in modeling. This beautiful terracotta group with a silver patina is a very good example of this. It depicts a Chinese man, his wife, and their child clinging to his mother's dress. At their feet, chickens peck at the grains. Should we see this as an allegory of the fruits of a marriage, producing grain that feeds the household? This is not certain. At the Sèvres factory, Leriche developed a series of figures and scenes related to the theater, a very popular pastime in the last quarter of the 18th century. He did not fail to depict great actors such as Préville, in the role of Figaro. Our group is rather inspired by the vogue for china that prevailed throughout the 18th century, particularly from the 1730s onwards, in the wake of Christophe Huet's (1700-1759) decorations for the Château de Chantilly (1737), with the spread of models engraved by François Boucher (1703-1770), Gabriel Huquier (1695-1772), and the series engraved by Jean-Baptiste Pillement (1728-1808). The terracotta group we are presenting is similar to another similar group sold at Christie's on November 15, 1984 (lot 318). It was signed and dated: "j. Leriche fec. 1785", which could allow us to date our work around that date. The subject could be inspired by the cartoons for the Chinese hanging designed by François Boucher to be executed as a tapestry at the Beauvais factory.
PIETRO della VECCHIA (Vicence 1603- Venise 1678) HERACLITE Huile sur toile (rentoilage ancien) Hauteur : 97, 5 cm Largeur : 70 cm
Pietro della Vecchia is one of the major figures of seventeenth-century Venetian painting, whose abundant work covers all subjects, including religion, history, gender, and even figures. His first dated work dates back to 1620 and demonstrates the influence of Carlo Saraceni and Jean Leclerc, who brought to Venice a chiaroscuro inherited from their years in the Caravaggesque movement in Rome. Around 1625, he joined the studio of Padovanino (1588-1648), a continuator of the Renaissance tradition, and primarily of the style of Titian; this influence would have a lasting impact on him, leading to the production of fake Giorgione or Titian paintings, which he traded in partnership with his father-in-law, the painter Nicolas Régnier (1591-1667). Under the influence of the Genoese Bernardo Strozzi (1581-1644), who had settled in Venice, he brightened his palette with vibrant colors. From 1640 to 1674, he produced the models for the mosaics for St. Mark's Basilica, and then created various large religious cycles for Venice, Treviso, and other churches in the Veneto region. The ancient philosopher, pessimistic and melancholic, Heraclitus is frequently paired with Democritus, aptly represented by della Vecchia in a painting very similar in size to ours (96.5 x 73 cm, private collection in Paris, no. 123 of the artist's catalogue raisonné published by Bernard Aikema; Pietro della Vecchia and the Heritage of the Renaissance in Venice, Florence, 1990), to the point that one is tempted to see it as a counterpart to our painting.