LOT DETAILS

Materials:

oil on canvas

Measurements:

51.34 in. (130.40 cm.) (height) by 38.50 in. (97.80 cm.) (width)

Exhibited:

Paris, Galerie Charpentier, Célébrités Françaises, 1953-1954, no. 185. London, Royal Academy of Arts, European Masters of the Eighteenth Century, 27 November 1954-27 February 1955, no. 342. Louveciennes, Musée-Promenade de Marly-le-Roi-Louveciennes, Madam du Barry: De Versailles à Louveciennes, 21 March-29 June 1992.

Literature:

É.-L. Vigée Le Brun, Souvenirs, Paris, 1835, I, pp. 168-169. É.-L. Vigée Le Brun, 'Extrait des couvenirs autobiographique de Mme Vigée-Le Brun', F.A. Kourakine, Souvenirs des voyages de la princesse Natalie Kourakine, Mosco, 1903, p. 474. P. de Nolhac, Madame Vigée-Le Brun: Peintre de la reine Marie-Antoinette, 1755-1842, Paris, 1908, p. 81, 82, 85, 97, and 139. P. de Nolhac, Madame Vigée-Le Brun: Peintre de la reine Marie-Antoinette, Paris, 1912, pp. 141-142. W.H. Helm, Vigée Le Brun, 1755-1842: Her Life, Works, and Friendships, Boston, 1915, p. 188. Douglas Cooper, ed., Great Private Collections, Paris, 1963, p. 177, illustrated. J. Baillio, 'Identification de quelques portraits d'anonymes de Vigée Le Brun aux États-Unis', Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 6, XCVI, November 1980, pp. 159-160, 167-168, fig. 6. Musée-promenade de Marly-le-Roi-Louveciennes, Madame du Barry: De Versailles á Louvenciennes, Paris, March-June 1992, pp. 155, 186, and 189, no. 1 and no. 88. S. Moehring, L'orignial était fait pour les Dieux! Die Comtesse Dubarrry in der Bildkunst, Ph.D. dissertation, 1995, pp. 100-105, fig. 81. É.L. Vigée Le Brun, Souvenirs, Paris, 2015, I, p. 113, illustrated. J. Baillo and X. Salmon, Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, Paris, 2015-2016, pp. pp. 72, 86, 169, 334, and 347, no. 54. C. Devauxtreis, 'La beauté est toujours reine?: bildiche Legitimationsstrategien königlicher Mätressen Ludwis XIV. und Ludwigs XV', Wissenschaftliche Beiträge aus dem Tectum Verlag: Reige Kunstgeschichte, Baden-Baden, 2017, VII, p. 186, fig. 120.

Provenance:

The sitter, by whom commissioned at the old Château de Louveciennes in summer 1789, but left unfinished and presumably entrusted to Louis Hercule Timoléon de Cossé (1734-1792), Duc de Brissac, and perhaps retrieved at his residence with other portraits of Madame Du Barry in September 1793 by Louis Antoine Auguste de Rohan-Chabot (1733-1807), later 6th Duc de Rohan, and by whom passed to Louis Marie Jacques Amalric, comte de Narbonne-Lara (1755-1813), and by whom restored in 1802 to The artist, Élisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun (1755-1842), Hôtel Le Brun, rue du Gros-Chenet, Paris, where described in her estate inventory as 'Un Portrait de Made. Dubarri à mi jambe en costume de fete & tenant une fleur assise au milieu d'un Parterre dans son cadre de Bois doré', and by inheritance to her niece Caroline Vigée (1791-1864) and her husband Jean-Nicolas-Louis de Rivière (1778-1861), Paris and Versailles, and by whom presumably sold circa 1845 to Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (1754-1838), Prince de Bénévent (1754-1838), Château de Valençay, Valençay; (†) his sale, Hôtel des Ventes Mobilières, Paris, 9-10 March 1847, lot 69, where presumably acquired by Justin Tripier Le Franc (1805-1883) and his wife Françoise-Élisabeth ('Eugénie') Le Brun (1797-1872), Paris and Passy; (†) his sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 5-7 June 1883, lot 5. A Prince of Hohenlohe, possibly Chlodwig Carl Viktor (1819-1901), Prince of Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, Prince of Ratibor and Corvey. with Eugène Kraemer, Paris, from whom acquired for 150,000 francs on 18 January 1911 by Eugène-Charles-Joachim Fould (1876-1929), Baron Fould-Springer and his wife Maria Cécilia von Springer (1886-1978), Paris, and by descent to their daughter Baroness Elie de Rothschild (née Liliane Fould-Springer; 1916-2003), Paris, and by descent to the present owners.