After François Clouet

Pierpont Morgan purchased his collection of drawings en bloc in 1909 when he agreed to acquire the cache of some 1500 sheets assembled by Charles Fairfax Murray on offer through the Roman dealer Alexandre Imbert. Outside of this single purchase, he had occasionally acquired drawings during his trips to London and Paris. Among his earlier acquisitions is a group of twelve sheets attributed to the French Renaissance portraitist Francois Clouet and members of the Clouet family purchased from the Naples based firm active in Paris, C and E Canessa. This purchase reveals his interest in court portraiture and his appreciation for drawings in a combination of colored chalks.
These twelve drawings remained at the Morgan, unaccessioned and uncatalogued, until recently. Clouet scholar Alexandra Zvereva identified them as eighteenth century copies of portraits by Clouet and his workshop.
For eleven of the drawings, the originals on which they were based all passed through English collections (Castle Howard or John Bouverie and his descendants) in the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth century. The originals by Clouet and his workshop are now found in the British Museum and the Musee Conde, Chantilly. The drawing depicting Jean III d'Annebault replicates a lost sheet, the provenance of which is unknown. The original on which this copy is based is in the British Museum.