Madame d'Aguesseau de Fresnes
Historical Context
Vigée Le Brun's 1789 portrait of Madame d'Aguesseau de Fresnes was painted in the final months before the French Revolution permanently altered both the artist's life and the world of aristocratic patronage she served. As the most celebrated female painter of the 18th century and portraitist to Marie Antoinette, Vigée Le Brun's elegant portraits defined the visual image of the French ancien régime. She fled Paris in October 1789, beginning a long exile.
Technical Analysis
Vigée Le Brun's oil-on-wood panel demonstrates her characteristic luminous flesh tones and natural, unaffected grace. The warm palette and flowing composition show her mastery of presenting aristocratic beauty with both naturalism and refinement.
Provenance
Presumably the collection of the sitter and her family; possibly (Ferol, Paris), c. 1850.[1] Mrs. Stephen Lyne-Stephens [1813-1894, née Yolande-Marie-Louise Duvernay],[2] Lynford Hall, Norfolk, Upper Grove House, Roehampton, and Paris; (her estate sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 9-11 and 13-17 May 1895, 3rd day [May 11], no. 360, sold for 2,250 guineas); (Thos. Agnew and Sons, Ltd., London); sold 13 May 1895 to J. Pierpont Morgan I [1837-1913], London;[3] consigned July 1943 by the Morgan estate to (M. Knoedler & Co., New York); sold October 1943 to (Wildenstein & Co., Inc., New York); purchased 3 January 1944 by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[4] gift 1946 to NGA. [1] According to T. Humphry Ward and William Roberts, _Pictures in the Collection of J. Pierpont Morgan at Prince's Gate & Dover House, London: Dutch & Flemish, French, Italian, Spanish_, 2 vols., London, 1907: unpaginated. Frits Lugt, _Répertoir des catalogues de ventes publiques intéressant l'art ou la curiosité_, 4 vols., The Hague, 1939-1964: 2:nos. 22745 and 25136, records two sales in the 1850s for the dealer Férol, one of 22 January 1856, in which there were paintings, and the second on 7-8 December 1859, composed of prints and books. The NGA portrait was featured in neither. [2] On the life and career of Mrs. Stephens Lyne-Stephens (earlier in her life, the French ballerina Pauline Duvernay), who was an art collector of considerable stature, see Louis Véron, _Les mémoires d'un bourgeois de Paris_, 6 vols., Paris, 1854; Charles Boigne, _Ces demoiselles de l'opéra_, Paris, 1887: 110-118; Lillian Moore, "Pauline Duvernay," _The Dancing Times_ (January 1934): 449-452; Cyril W. Beaumont, _Three French Dancers of the Nineteenth Century: Duvernay, Livry, and Beaugrand_, London, 1935; Ivor Forbes Guest, _The Romantic Ballet in Paris_, Middletown, Connecticut, 1966. [3] On p. 34 of the _Saterlee Album_ (New York, Pierpont Morgan Library Archives), there is a photograph of the upstairs drawing room of J.P. Morgan's London home at Princes Gate (see _J. Pierpont Morgan, Collector: European Decorative Arts from the Wadsworth Atheneum_, exh. cat., Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, 1987: 32, fig. 7, 35, fig. 10). The painting is included in J.P. Morgan Jr.'s list of Morgan possessions lent to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1912 (document in the Morgan Library, box 168, folder 3, p. 143, no. 1347, as the "Portrait of the Marquise de Laborde by Vigée Le Brun...," with the Morgan inventory number 1341); Eliot W. Rowlands, personal communication with Joseph Baillio. [4] See The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/1674.
