Raymond de Lafage Head of a Woman Pen and brown ink over black chalk PROVENANCE EXHIBITED Lafage displayed a precocious talent and was among the most exuberant draughtsmen of the seventeenth century in France, despite the brevity of his career. Before embarking on life as an artist, Lafage was obliged to study anatomy as a surgeon's apprentice in Toulouse. Having quitted that profession, he became a pupil of Jean-Pierre Rivalz (1625-1706), then spent a year in Paris, followed by two years in Italy from 1679-80. He is recorded in Paris again three years later. In 1684 he completed an important commission of ten scenes depicting the history of Toulouse, executed for the Hôtel de Ville in that city. He departed immediately thereafter, anxious to return to Italy to continue his studies, but died en route. He was just twenty-eight. Even so his drawings were much prized by eighteenth-century collectors, Crozat and Mariette among them. Unusually for a seventeenth-century artist, he frequently signed his drawings, an indication, at least, of a certain pride. This spectacular study of a woman's head was formerly in the possession of the sculptor and draughtsman Henry Moore. Moore's interest in this work may be the result of the curious similarity between the technique employed here by Lafage and Moore's own practice of describing the shape of the subject with contour pen lines. Both artists displayed a strong sculptural sense in their draughtsmanship. The present drawing hung in the sculptor's house until his death in 1986.
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