JEAN-BAPTISTE JACQUES AUGUSTIN (1759-1832)
Portrait miniature of Thérèse Jeanne Marie Hortense de Tardieu, Marquise de Maleyssie, née de Luc (d. 1826), in white dress and red shawl; dated 1814.
Watercolour on ivory
Ivory registration number: Q2Z42ZZ7
Signed and dated ‘Augustin./ 1814’ and inscribed on the backing card ‘Madame de Maleyssie’
Square, gilt-bronze frame
Circular, 78 mm diam.
Provenance: Maxime Hébert (1853-1945) Collection, Paris;
With Leo R. Schidlof, from whom acquired by Ernst Holzscheiter in London, 15 May 1954 (inv. nos. MD/0591 and 36); Christie’s, London, Treasured Portraits from the Collection of Ernst Holzscheiter, 4th July 2018, lot 33.
Literature: F. de Langle & E. Schlumberger, ‘Augustin’, Connaissance des Arts, no. 69, November 1957, p. 106; B. Pappe, Jean-Baptiste Jacques Augustin 1759-1832. Une nouvelle excellence dans l’art du portrait en miniature, Verona, 2015, p. 328, no. 877, illustrated.
Exhibited: Geneva, Musée d’art et d’histoire, Chefs-d’œuvre de la miniature et de la gouache, 1956, no. 16.
SOLD
“When this portrait was painted in 1814, the French monarchy was restored briefly, likely to the delight of her husband’s family – and this portrait may have been painted to celebrate that event…”
The sitter is Thérèse Jeanne Marie Hortense de Tardieu, Marquise de Maleyssie (née de Luc) (d. 1826). Known as Hortense by her family, she was the daughter of Comte de Luc and married Antoine Charles Marie Anne de Tardeiu de Maleissye (marquis de Maleissye) (1764-1851) in 1800 in Lisbon, Portugal. The Tardieu de Maleissye family, who claimed descent from the line of Joan of Arc, were committed to the royalist and counter-revolutionary cause. Her father-in-law, Antoine-Charles Tardieu, Lord of Fontaine-les-Ribouts, lieutenant general and deputy of the nobility at the Estates General of 1789, paid the price for their attachment to the king by death by guillotine, in 1793, his wife, Elisabeth-Marie, was executed the following year.
Although her birth date is not known, Hortense must have been in her teens when she married in 1800, as fourteen years after her wedding she appears here to be in her late 20s. Painted by the foremost artist of the period, Jean-Baptiste Augustin, he seems to have delighted in describing in detail every aspect of his sitter’s costume – from her jewelled headband to her Kashmir shawl.
When this portrait was painted in 1814, the monarchy was restored briefly, likely to the delight of her husband’s family – and this portrait may have been painted to celebrate that event. This was not to last however, and the senior line of the Bourbons was overthrown again in the July Revolution of 1830. A cadet Bourbon branch, the House of Orléans, then ruled for 18 years (1830–1848), until it too was deposed.
In 1819, Louis XVIII appointed the artist Augustin 'peintre en miniature et en émail de la chambre et du cabinet du roi' and 'premier peintre en miniature' in 1824. The artist had been made a Knight of the Legion d'Honneur three years earlier in 1821.