(Marseilles circa 1700–1782 Berlin)
A river landscape with fishermen hauling their nets, a man and woman resting on a bank holding fishing-rods beside a basket of fish, a rocky landscape and footbridge beyond,
signed, inscribed and dated lower right: Gr. De LaCroix/Rom. 1754,
oil on canvas, 64.5 x 49.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
Miss Constable, Mamaroneck, New York;
Westchester private collection;
sold, New York, Parke-Bernet, 29th November 1961, lot 25, for $2,500 to Allen W. Pierce;
The Wills Sale, Sotheby’s London, 5th July 2005, lot 10;
Private collection, Bavaria

Exhibited:
Baltimore, Baltimore Museum of Art, The Age of Elegance, 1959, no. 15

The present composition was painted in 1754, when Lacroix de Marseille was in Rome. Little is known about the artist’s early life or when exactly he arrived in Italy, as he is not recorded until 1750, when the Marquis de Vandières met him in Rome. A painting from this period, A View of a Seaport, signed and dated “Grenier de La Croix, fecit Rom 1750”, exists in Ohio, Toledano Museum of Art (see: France and the Eighteenth Century, exhibition catalogue, London, Royal Academy, 6th January – 3rd March 1968, no. 358). The signature, inscription and date on the present work further prove the artist’s presence in the eternal city.

In the absence of any documentary evidence, it has traditionally been assumed that Lacroix was a pupil of Claude-Joseph Vernet and that they were evidently working side by side in Rome in 1751, when Lacroix executed four copies of Vernet’s work (Uppark, Sussex). Lacroix’s copies are almost indistinguishable from Vernet’s originals, which may help to explain why he only emerged from obscurity after his and Vernet’s paths separated in 1753, with Vernet returning to France, leaving Lacroix in Rome. Lacroix spent more than ten years there before returning to France, where he is recorded in 1776 and 1780. He died in Berlin in 1782, according to Pahin de la Blancherie.