Portrait Of Madame De Courcelles At Her Toilette

Medium: Oil On An Oval Canvas
Size: 81.2 x 65 cm (32 x 25.6 in)

Provenance: Mme de Courcelles; her daughter Countess (of the Holy Roman Empire) de Guibert; to her daughter Adelaide-Charlotte-Appolline, Countess de Guibert (died 1852), who married in 1795 Francois-Rene Vallet de la Touche, created Count Vallet de Villeneuve (by Napoleon in 1808), Chamberlain of the King of Holland, Senator of the Second Empire (1852), owner of the Chateau of Chenonceaux; to their son Armand-Louis-Septime Vallet de la Touche, Count de Villeneuve-Guibert (by royal ordinance of 1815) (1799-1875); to his son Rene-Gaston, Vicomte de Villeneuve-Guibert (1826-), who married Claire-Marie-Valentine Duchatel (granddaughter of 1st Count Duchatel); to her cousin, Countess Duchatel; Durand-Ruel Galleries; Newhouse Galleries, New York (1952); Private Collection, Texas (until 1993).

Exhibited: Paris, Palais Bourbon, Exposition des Alsaciens-Lorrains 1874.

The decline in Greuze's reputation during the the second and third quarters of this century - after having been one of the most popular painters with nineteenth and early twentieth century collectors of French eighteenth century art - was a reaction against what was perceived as an obsessively sentimental approach to painting. Happily, this was arrested by the monographic exhibition held at Hartford in 1976, by an excellent biography by Anita Brookner and his inclusion in several of the recent major shows of French art. Far more wide ranging in talent than his popular images of pretty girls inappropriately disguised as 'chastity' or 'innocence' lead one to expect, Greuze was the master of a new interpretation of genre subjects (praised by Diderot as the equal of history painting), and a superb portraitist. Furthermore, despite not having had the lengthy academic training of so many of his peers, he was a superb draughtsman and, as well as a handful of full composition drawings, he produced some splendid figures and bold character studies in red chalk which are much sought after today.

His modest birth and training with a minor Lyon painter ill-prepared him for the sudden fame he would achieve at the Salon of 1755. The next two years, which he spent in Italy, proved invaluable however, and the decade following his return was the most productive of his career. His large scale genre paintings, which mimic the themes of Dutch painting of a century earlier, are nonetheless highly original in their approach, most notably for their moral conviction. Greuze's ambition to be accepted as a painter of elevated history subjects, possibly fueled by the adulation he had enjoyed with his early genre subjects, almost derailed his career. The judgment of his peers was probably right, however, and we may be grateful he returned to the subjects to which his talents were best suited. As his style matured, his touch softened and we see a gradual blurring of forms that becomes particularly apparent in his late portraits of the revolutionary and directoire periods. Despite changing taste, which made his earlier paintings increasingly unfashionable, he remained a leading figure in the art establishment, being invited to become a member of the revolutionary Salon juries, and widely mourned upon his death.

The oval format of this portrait was a frequent choice by Greuze when painting half length figures; attention could be concentrated on the face and hands (if included) and it served to compliment the curves of the human figure. Although Edgar Munhall has dated this portrait to the late 1750s, immediately upon his return from Italy, this writer considers that the evidence of the style of the molding on her dressing-table mirror might place it in the mid-1760s. Nonetheless, it is more or less contemporaneous with some of his greatest portraits, the Mme Gougenot (New Orleans, Museum of Art) of 1757, Mlle Barberie de Courteilles (Brunswick, Herzog Ulrich Museum) of 1759 and the Monsieur Babuti (Paris, David-Weill Collection) of 1761. In the lustrous whites of her dress, with their complex folds, the artist has displayed his extraordinary skill at giving texture and substance to white silk, a facility that he demonstrates not only in his female portraits but in pictures such as the famous Cruche Casse (Paris, Louvre) and figures of women representing the various virtues (often modeled, most unsuitably, by his notoriously promiscuous wife).

Here, this elegant Society matron is seated at her dressing table, completing her toilette. Although her hair is powdered and her cheeks rouged, her dress, still unlaced, must perforce be held up to preserve her modesty, the profusion of silken pink and white ribbons being more decorative than utilitarian. On the table, covered with a white cloth, is a small pot of rouge beside a pink and white pin cushion. Around her shoulders a fichu is loosely placed and, on her right wrist, she wears a painted cameo held by seven rows of seed pearls whose hard surface is contrasted by the warm flesh tones of her arms. The chair on which she is seated is an elegant fauteuil of the 1750s, but the more austere lines and acanthus leaf molding of the mirror on her dressing-table seems to be of slightly later date. Of Mme de Courcelles herself we know nothing; although an ancient family, its members at this date seem not to have held any positions of importance in the civil or military service of the Crown. A portrait of her daughter, of similar dimensions, was once attributed to Greuze but is more probably the work of Francois-Hubert Drouais; this same daughter inherited her mother's portrait which, during the nineteenth century, hung in the romantic chateau of Chenonceaux.

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