THE PROPERTY OF A NOBLEMAN
FRANÇOIS DUMONT (1751-1831)

Citizen Audoÿ, nearly full-face, in double-breasted blue coat, white waistcoat and knotted cravat with lace jabot, curly powdered hair

Details
FRANÇOIS DUMONT (1751-1831)
Citizen Audoÿ, nearly full-face, in double-breasted blue coat, white waistcoat and knotted cravat with lace jabot, curly powdered hair
signed 'Dumont. f.' (mid-left)
3 in. (75 mm.) diam., gilt-metal mount within an ebonised wood surround
Provenance
bequeathed to Baron Le Prieur de Blainvilliers.
Baronne Le Prieur de Blainvilliers (+1890).
bequeathed by the latter to Mrs Henry Jahan.
Eudoxe Marcille, inv. no. 12.
Literature
The artist's second fee book (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Fondation Jacques Doucet, MS. 104), folio 23 (in 1794/1795): 'Le C[itoye]n audoÿ 300 [francs]'.

Lot Essay

Citizen Audoÿ was a chef au trésor public. He died in Paris in the rue du petit-carreau no. 16 on 27 January 1807.
Two lines below the present entry, Dumont's fee book lists 'La C[itoyen]ne audoÿ et Sa fille' at a price of 500 francs, which was later in the Heckett Collection, Pittsburgh, sold Sotheby Parke Bernet, Monte-Carlo, 4 May 1977, lot 64. In the year V of the Revolution (1796/1797), Dumont painted 'La petite fille du C. Audoy' at a price of 6 louis d'or (sold Sotheby's, London, 24 March 1980, lot 63, artist and sitter unidentified).
Dumont listed in his fee book for the year III (September 1794 - September 1795) 144 miniatures, and the portraits of the Audoÿ family are certainly among the finest pieces. They may be compared to Dumont's other miniatures of this year in the Louvre (see P. Jean-Richard, Miniatures sur ivoire. Musée du Louvre. Musée d'Orsay, Paris, 1994, nos. 194, 197-200). For another miniature from this particularly inspired period, see lot 27.
The present miniature will be included in Bodo Hofstetter's forthcoming catalogue raisonné of François Dumont's works.

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