Madame Le Fèvre de Caumartin as Hebe
Jean-Marc Nattier·1753
Historical Context
Jean-Marc Nattier's 1753 portrait of Madame Le Fèvre de Caumartin as Hébé presents one of his most accomplished late works, in which a real woman is transformed into Hebe, the goddess of youth and cupbearer of the gods, shown holding the golden cup she fills for the Olympians. The Hebe conceit was popular in Nattier's oeuvre because it allowed him to celebrate feminine youth and beauty with mythological legitimacy while the golden cup provided a vehicle for displaying his skill with reflective surfaces. Madame Le Fèvre de Caumartin was presumably a member of the extended Caumartin family connected to the French court, and the 1753 date places the work in Nattier's final decade of productivity. The NGA version documents the formula at its mature best — the mythological alibi perfectly integrating with the desire to simply paint a beautiful woman.
Technical Analysis
The golden cup receives Nattier's most careful still-life attention — warm metallic highlights on a complex curved surface. The flesh tones are smooth and luminous against the blue-grey sky, and the cloud on which Hebe is informally seated gives the portrait an outdoor freshness appropriate to the deity of youth.
Provenance
Traditionally said to have belonged to Odette-Marie de Montesquiou-Fezensac [1853-1874], wife of comte Antoine de Gramont d'Aster [1846-1894]; presumably by inheritance to her brother, Louis-Paul-Anatole, marquis de Montesquiou-Fezensac [1857-1883]; by inheritance to his widow [née Claude-Étiennette-Marie-Octavie de Sauvan d'Aramon, 1864-1936];[1] (Wildenstein & Co., Paris, New York, and London); sold December 1944 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[2] gift 1946 to NGA. [1] The provenance provided by Wildenstein to the Kress Foundation also includes the name of the comtesse Fleury, with no additional information. The picture was not included in any known Gramont or Fleury sales; see Colin Eisler, _Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation: European Schools Excluding Italian_, Oxford, 1977: 311 nn 7 and 8. [2] The memorandum of agreement between Wildenstein & Co. and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation for the sale of ten paintings, including _Mme. de Caumartin_ by Jean Marc Nattier, is dated 28 December 1944 (copy in NGA curatorial files). [2] The Gramont, Fleury, and Montesquiou names also appear in the provenance provided by Wildenstein; see letter dated 14 April 1999 in NGA curatorial files. See also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/1315.
