JEAN-LAURENT MOSNIER (FRENCH, 1743/44 - 1808)

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Details

JEAN-LAURENT MOSNIER (FRENCH, 1743/44 - 1808)
Duchesse de Châtillon, seated on a red upholstered chair, in silk white dress with blue sash and ribbons, gauze cap over her partly upswept powdered hair dressed in rolls, her right hand resting and holding open a book set on a table covered with red cloth, glass vase with flowers
signed and dated 'mosnier 1785' (mid-right)
on ivory
3 1/16 in. (78 mm.) diam., gilt-metal mount with stamped surround

Provenance

Duchesse d'Uzès (1847-1933), Paris, in 1912.

Literature

P.-A. Lemoisne, 'Les Miniaturistes français à l'exposition de Bruxelles', Les Arts, no. 129, 1912, September, pp. 14-15.
P.-A. Lemoisne, 'Le portrait-miniature en France de la Régence au règne de Louis-Philippe', in L'Exposition de la Miniature à Bruxelles en 1912, Brussels and Paris, 1913, p. 66 (as très intéressant portrait), illustrated pl. XXVIII, no. 127.
L. Demonts and Ch. Terrasse, Musée du Louvre. Catalogue de la donation Félix Doistau. Miniatures des XVIIIe et XIXe siècles, Paris, 1922, p. 63.
P. Jean-Richard, Miniatures sur ivoire. Musée du Louvre, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, 1994, p. 265.

Exhibited

Brussels, Hôtel du Baron Goffinet, Exposition de la miniature, 1912, no. 623 (part, lent by Madame la Duchesse d'Uzès, Paris).

Special notice

Prospective purchasers are advised that several countries prohibit the importation of property containing materials from endangered species, including but not limited to coral, ivory and tortoiseshell. Accordingly, prospective purchasers should familiarize themselves with relevant customs regulations prior to bidding if they intend to import this lot into another country.

Further details

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Lot Essay

The sitter is probably Amable Emilie de Châtillon-Porcéan, duchesse de Châtillon (1761-1840) who was married in 1777 to Marie-François de Crussol, duc d'Uzès (1756-1843). They had two children: Adrien François Emmanuel de Crussol d'Uzès, duc de Crussol 1778-1837 and Alexandre Célestine Zoé Emmanuelle Thimarette de Crussol d'Uzès (1785-1866).
Another miniature by Mosnier, signed and dated 1784, of the Duchesse de Châtillon, in a very similar pose to the present portrait holding a quill in her right hand as she writes a letter, is in the Louvre (see P. Jean-Richard, op. cit., p. 265, no. 474, illustrated opposite and enlarged detail p. 14).

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