Les adieux de Henri IV et de Gabrielle d'Estrées

Les adieux de Henri IV et de Gabrielle d'Estrées (The Farewells of Henri IV and Gabrielle d'Estrées), painted in 1786 and held at the Musée national du château de Pau, depicts one of the most celebrated royal love affairs in French history. Gabrielle d'Estrées was Henri IV's favorite mistress and would likely have become his queen had she not died in 1599, a loss the king was said to have mourned deeply. The subject allowed Vincent to combine historical narrative with the sentimental portrayal of private emotion — an intersection increasingly valued in late Ancien Régime painting as Enlightenment sensibility placed new weight on personal feeling alongside public virtue. The Pau château's collection focused on Henri IV subjects, and this painting's pendant relationship to the Sully scene suggests that Vincent's Henri IV series was planned as a coherent group. The emotional intimacy of the subject distinguishes it from more austere Neoclassical history paintings.

The farewell scene requires a compositional balance of tenderness and dignity: the two figures are brought into close proximity while maintaining the decorum of historical narrative painting. Vincent uses warm interior tonality and soft illumination to create an atmosphere of private intimacy unusual in his more public history canvases.