Jean Baptiste PATER (Valenciennes 1695 - Paris 1736) Paysage à la tour et au lac Canvas, probably a fragment 51 x 42 cm Provenance: Sale Cousin, Paris, 10 December 1847, no. 43 (Les Baigneuses. 300 frs); Sale collection of the late M. Mailand, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 2-3 May 1881, no. 103 (Les Baigneuses. 3 920 frs); Anonymous sale, Paris, Galerie Charpentier, 10 May 1956, no. 95 (Les plaisirs du bain); Sale of the Princess de Faucigny-Lucinge, Paris, Palais Galliera, 7 December 1964, no. 64; Anonymous sale, Paris, Palais Galliera, 24 and 25 June 1968, no. 48 (Attributed to Jean Baptiste Pater; Anonymous sale, Paris, Christie's, 26 June 2003, no. 68, reproduced in colour (Jean Baptiste Pater, Paysage avec une tour à proximité d'un étang); Anonymous sale, Paris, Artcurial, 14 November 2017, no. 491 (Jean Baptiste Pater). Exhibition: Probably Masterpieces of Five Centuries, Nottingham Art Gallery, 1961, no. 17. Bibliography: F. Ingersoll-Smouse, Pater, Paris, 1928, no. 342 and 343. "Six young women bathing in a small river at the bottom of a hillside surmounted by a tower", is how our painting is described in 19th-century auction catalogues. One of its owners had in fact added six young women to the foreground, inspired by Pater's painting Les Plaisirs du bain in the Wallace collection. In 1956, the Princesse de Faucigny-Lucinge bought it at a sale at the Galerie Charpentier, had it cleaned, and the figures and certain additions, such as the top of the tower, disappeared.