Studio RT Ltd

Description

We are delighted to offer for sale this beautiful and finely executed 18th/19th Century French or Continental portrait Pastel of Madame de Montesson, who, although known by this name, married into the French Royal blood. There are many prints and portraits of her that can be viewed on google images, and she was painted by Elisabeth Vigee Lebrun and other notable French painters. The pastel is indistinctly signed in the lower right hand corner (as shown) and we have also retained a piece of the old backing board, which bears on old French label with the name of the subject.

The pastel depicts Madame de Montesson, younger than when painted by Lebrun, wearing a low cut gown in terracotta, with double lace frill around the neckline and pale yellow sleeves, pulled in by pearl beads. Her hair is piled high and powdered, in the elaborate fashion of the time, with a band of terracotta material around it and with long curls cascading over her shoulders.

As to the identity of the artist, we have tried many combinations of the letters that we can make out of the signature. It appears to have a capital C and then a capital P, with a circular scroll at the beginning, followed by an o and possibly then an l, but after this it is impossible to read and very small. It is also possible that it is Calo at the beginning, but we have looked on various sites, looking for anything that resembles this or the work, and the only artist that we found who was a pastellist doing portraits, who was working in the late 18th century was a Carolina de Pollet, a German lady, who executed a pair of oval portraits of her two married sisters around 1778 and whose technique very much resembles this portrait. In the two portraits that we have seen, which were sold in Paris, she signed Carolina de Pollet, although she is also listed in a pdf on 18th century pastellists, as Carolina Pollet, nee Johanna Carolina Helena Pachelbel von Gehag 1750-1797. Her brother was a diplomat and had connections in Paris and Sweden and Carolina herself married a Swede in 1764.

Charlotte-Jeanne Béraud de La Haye de Riou (4 October 1735– 6 February 1806) was a mistress to Louis Philippe Duc of Orleans and ultimately, his wife however, Louis XV would not allow her to become the Duchess. She wrote and acted in several plays. She is known simply as Madame de Montesson.
Life

Charlotte-Jeanne Béraud de La Haye de Riou was born in Paris of an old Breton family.

On 11 October 1757, she married the seventy-year-old widower Jean Baptiste, Marquis of Montesson, who died in 1769. Her beauty and intelligence attracted the attention of the widowed Louis Philippe d'Orleans, the fat (his wife Louise Henriette de Bourbon had died in 1759), whom she secretly married in 1773 with the authorisation of Louis XV of France. After her marriage to the Duke of Orléans, a member of the royal family and a Prince of Royal Blood, her low rank did not allow her the title of Duchess of Orleans.

For her husband's amusement and her own, she set up a little theatre and wrote several plays, in the acting of which she herself took part.

She was arrested on 20 April 1793 (1 floréal an II of the Republican Calendar) during the Terror, and first imprisoned in the La Force prison in Paris. She was released on 28 September 1794 (after the fall of Robespierre), befriended Josephine de Beauharnais, and was a prominent figure at the beginning of the empire. She died in 1806 and was buried in the Eglise Saint-Roch.
Works

The best edition of her works appeared under the title of Œuvres anonymes in 1782-1785. See Charles Colle, Journal (1868) the Memoirs of St Simon, Madame de Genlis, the duchesse d'Abrantes and Mme de Levis G Strenger, "La Société de la marquise de Montesson," in the Nouvelle revue (1902) J Turquan, Madame de Montesson douairière d'Orléans (Paris, 1904) and G. Capon and R Yves-Plessis, Les Théâtres clandestins du xviii' siècle (1904).

The pastel has been newly double mounted in two tone acid-free mountboard and has been newly framed in a 2 1/2" ornate silver/bronzed frame to suit. It will be supplied wired and ready to hang.

Image size: 18 3/4" x 14 1/4" - 47.65cm x 36.2cm

Frame size: 29 1/2" x 24 7/8" - 74.95cm x 63.2cm

Medium: Pastels on paper

Condition: Very good, with no losses. The mounts and frame are new.