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The Nativity
Original
painting, 30.4 x 16.5 cm – 12 x 6 1/2 in.
Bears an inscription on the frame: Suvee.
The Nativity, canvas
We would like to thank Anne Leclair and Sophie Join-Lambert for confirming the attribution of this painting to Joseph-Benoît Suvée, via digital photograph and email in June 2026.
The Baudouin van de Walle Collection (1901–1988), Belgian archaeologist.
In 1785, the Marquise de Noailles commissioned Joseph-Benoît Suvée to paint a Nativity[1] for the chapel of her townhouse on Rue Saint-Honoré in Paris. Seized during the Revolution and subsequently sold, the work has since disappeared. A smaller-scale replica (Fig. 1), executed later around 1791 and acquired by the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in 2002 from the Jacques Leegenhoek gallery in Paris, has revealed the composition of the lost work.
Our previously unpublished sketch thus joins the two preparatory studies currently known for this Nativity[2]. When the commissioned work was presented at the 1785 Salon, the Mercure de France reported: ‘The Nativity is one of the finest works produced by Mr Suvée’s brush. The composition is far more skilful, the arrangement wise and noble, the drawing pure, the colouring gentle. The light is well distributed, the character of the heads truly beautiful”[3].
Born in Bruges, Suvée was a Flemish painter who entered the studio of Matthijs De Visch (1701–1765) at the age of eight. At the age of twenty, he left for Paris in the company of fellow students from the Academy in his hometown. Having become a pupil of Jean-Jacques Bachelier, he won the Grand Prix in 1771 and set off for Rome immediately afterwards, where he settled for six years. Elected a member of the Royal Academy in 1780, he returned to Rome in 1801, his career successes having led to his appointment as director of the French Academy in Rome. An excellent teacher and renowned pedagogue, he was the man who introduced Neoclassicism to ‘Belgium’ as it was known at the time.
[1] Sophie Join-Lambert, Anne Leclair, Joseph Benoît Suvée (1743–1807). An artist between Bruges, Rome and Paris, Paris, Arthéna, 2017, p. 239, p. 129.
[2] Ibid., pp. 130–131.
[3] Mercure de France: dedicated to the King, Paris, G. Cavelier, October 1785, no. 40, Bibliothèque nationale de France, p. 25 [Available online].
The Nativity, 75.5 x 46.5 cm, Brussels, Royal Museums of Fine Arts (inv. 12129), exhibited at the 1785 Salon (no. 24)