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Lot n° 335
Estimation :
900 - 1200
EUR
Jacques QUINE (1759-1839) - Lot 335
Jacques QUINE (1759-1839)
Iles Ste Marguerite where the fish has run aground drawn on the spot by Jacque Quine, 1798.
Watercolor on Holland laid paper (watermark with Amsterdam coat of arms and legend "PRO PATRIA
EJUSQUE LIBERTATE").
Titled at top.
Diameter: 15 cm (freckles).
Framed under glass. Blackened wood.
Our watercolor depicts the whale beached off Cannes in March 1798, whose skull is preserved in the Muséum
at the Natural History Museum in Paris. Jacques Quine, an architect from Grasse, drew a profile
of the whale in profile, which was later reproduced as an engraving. Our unpublished drawing represents a situational view
of the beaching site.
Bibliography :
- F. CUVIER, De l'histoire naturelle des Cétacés: ou recueil et examen des faits dont se compose l'histoire naturelle
of these animals, 1836.
Page 314: "The first [whale figure] was made by an architect from Grasse named Jacques Quine from a stranded individual.
Quine after an individual beached on the west coast of Sainte Marguerite Island on 30 ventôse year 6.
It shows this Mediterranean whale only in profile, which does not give a sufficient idea of its size.
The snout is of an elongation and uniformity of line that is not reminiscent of the snout
of any other whale figure. This animal was thirty feet long, with a dorsal fin
the pectoral fins were five, and from the tip of the snout to the eye, it was twelve feet long.
feet. All the upper parts of the body are blackish and the lower parts white with pinkish tints that seem more marked in the folds. All in all, this is a poorly drawn figure
and whose head is too poorly detailed to be faithful."
- LACÉPÈDE, Histoire naturelle de Lacépède comprenant les cétacés, les quadrupèdes ovipares, les serpents
serpents et les poissons ; précédée de L'éloge de Lacépède par Cuvier ; avec des notes et la nouvelle
classification de M. A.-G. Desmarest, Paris, t. I, 1867.
Page 51: "On March 20, 1798, a cetacean twenty meters long was caught in the Mediterranean
the west coast of Sainte-Marguerite island, municipality of Cannes, Var department. The sailors
called it "souffleur". Mr. Jacques Quine, an architect from Grasse, drew a picture of it, which the President of the
of the Var department sent to the Executive Directory of the Republic. My
colleague M. Révellière-Lépaux, member of the Institut National, and at the time a member of the Directoire, was kind enough to
kindly gave me this drawing, which I had engraved; and soon after the baleen plates, head bones and other
bones of this animal having been brought to Paris, I easily recognized that this cetacean
belonged to the rorquaL species: "
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