Countess Ebba Sparre
Sébastien Bourdon·1652/1653
Historical Context
Sébastien Bourdon's portrait of Countess Ebba Sparre, painted during his 1652–1654 stay at the court of Queen Christina of Sweden, is one of the most important French Baroque portraits. Ebba Sparre was Christina's closest companion and confidante, described by contemporaries as extraordinarily beautiful, and her portrait by Bourdon — a French painter at the most intellectually brilliant court in Europe — combines French Baroque formal mastery with a romantic intensity appropriate to the exceptional relationship between the two women. Bourdon had absorbed both the Poussiniste classical tradition and the more painterly approach of the Venetians, and his Swedish portraits show him deploying both registers in response to the sophisticated taste of Christina's court. The portrait is a key document of mid-seventeenth-century Swedish court culture at its most cosmopolitan.
Technical Analysis
Bourdon presents Ebba Sparre with a three-quarter pose and landscape setting that gives the portrait both formal dignity and atmospheric openness. The flesh tones are warm and finely modelled, the costume rendered with the rich, fluid brushwork that reflects his knowledge of Van Dyck's portrait manner.
Provenance
Probably commissioned by Christina, Queen of Sweden [1626-1689], Stockholm, Antwerp, and inventoried 1656 amongst her goods to be sent to Rome;[1] by inheritance to Cardinal Decio Azzolini [1623-1689], Rome; by inheritance to his nephew, Marchese Pompeo Azzolini [d. 1696], Rome; sold 1696 to Principe Livio Odescalchi, Duke Bracciano [1652-1713], Rome; by inheritance to his nephew, Baldassare Odescalchi-Erba [d. 1746]; sold 1721 through Pierre Crozat [1665-1740] to Philippe II, duc d'Orléans [1674-1723], Paris; by inheritance to his son, Louis, duc d'Orléans [1703-1752], Paris; by inheritance to his son, Louis Philippe, duc d'Orléans [1725-1785], Paris; by inheritance to his son, Louis Philippe Joseph, duc d'Orléans [1747-1793], Paris; sold 1791 with the French and Italian paintings of the Orléans collection, which figure as a group in the next three sales, to Edouard, vicomte Walkuers [or Walquers], Brussels; sold 1792 to his cousin, François Louis Joseph, comte Laborde de Méréville [d. 1801], Paris and London; on consignment until 1798 with (Jeremiah Harman, London); sold 1798 through (Michael Bryan, London) to a consortium of Francis Egerton, 3rd duke of Bridgewater [1736-1803], London and Worsley Hall, Lancashire, Frederick Howard, 5th earl of Carlisle [1748-1825], Castle Howard, North Yorkshire, and George Granville Leveson-Gower, 1st duke of Sutherland [1758-1833], London, Trentham Hall, Stafford, and Dunrobin Castle, Highland, Scotland.[2] (Orléans Collection sale [French and Italian paintings], Coxe, Burrell and Foster, London, 14 February 1800, no. 11, as _The Portrait of the Queen of Sweden_). John Maitland [d. 1831], London, Loughton Hall, Essex, and Woodford Hall, Essex; (his estate sale, Christie & Manson, London, 30 July 1831, no. 14, as _Portrait of Christina, Queen of Sweden_); Joseph Neeld [d. 1856], Grittleton House, Wiltshire; by inheritance to his brother, Sir John Neeld, 1st bt. [1805-1891], Grittleton House; by inheritance to his son, Sir Algernon William Neeld, 2nd bt. [1846-1900], Grittleton House; by inheritance to his brother, Sir Audley Dallas Neeld, 3rd bt. [1849-1941], Grittleton House; by inheritance to Joseph Neeld's descendant through an illegitimate daughter, Lionel William [Inigo-Jones] Neeld [d. 1956], Grittleton House; (Neeld sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 13 July 1945, no. 52, as _Portrait of Christina of Sweden_); purchased by Kaye.[3] (Wildenstein & Co., Paris, New York, and London); sold 1947 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[4] gift 1952 to NGA. [1] The painting also appeared in the Queen's 1662 inventory of her belongings in Rome, and in the inventory taken 1689, the year of both her death and that of Cardinal Azzolino, to whom her paintings were bequeathed. On the history of Christina's collection, see Baron Carl Nils Daniel Bildt, "Queen Christina's Pictures," _The Nineteenth Century_ 56 (1904): 99-1003, and _Christina, Queen of Sweden: A Personality of European civilization_, Exh. cat., Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 1966. [2] Provenance provided by Wildenstein to the Kress Foundation. For details about the sale of the Orléans collection, see William Buchanan, _Memoirs of Painting with a Chronological History of the Importation of Pictures by the Great Masters into England since the French Revolution_, 2 vols., London, 1824: 1:1-216; Denys Sutton, "Aspects of British Collecting, Part III. XII: The Orléans Collection," _Apollo_ (May 1984): 357-372; and Jordana Pomeroy, "The Orléans Collection: Its impact on the British art world," _Apollo_ (February 1997): 26-31. Jeremiah Harman was head of a London banking house and had his own collection of paintings that was auctioned after his death in 1844. [3] Neeld's purchase at the Maitland sale is according to an annotated auction catalogue at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, and the painting is recorded in a 1913 manuscript copy of an 1851 manuscript catalogue of the Neeld collection (see letter from Martha Hepworth of the Getty Provenance Index dated 13 March 1986 in NGA curatorial files). In a letter of 20 January 1969 to Colin Eisler (copy in NGA curatorial files), the dealer David M. Koetser writes that among the paintings he sold to the Kress Foundation was "...indirectly...Sebastian Bourdon's 'Queen Christina'." It is possible that "Kaye" was a pseudonym used by Koetser at the 1945 sale, and that he was buying for the Foundation. [4] See The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/605.
