.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Marie-Thérèse Lorimier de Chamilly, née Marsollier (1738-1787), was twice painted by Jean-Marc Nattier. In the first portrait (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, inv. no. 45.172; fig. 1), dated 1749 and exhibited at the Paris Salon the following year, eleven-year-old Marie-Thérèse holds an open tortoiseshell and brass marquetry toilet casket made in the style of Boulle from which her mother, Marie-Catherine Marsollier, selects ornaments for the girl’s hair. This grand, life-size double portrait – among the most celebrated of Nattier’s career – presents the mother and daughter at their opulent toilette, draped in swaths of silk and satin and seated before a gilt-framed mirror in a palatial marble interior; it is an extravagant image meant to dazzle and impress. The present portrait, painted in 1757, is of an entirely different order. Executed less than a year after her mother’s death and shortly after her own marriage, the nineteen-year-old newlywed is depicted with a quiet modesty appropriate to her new station, in a bust-length format that showcases her gentle beauty and tender character; only the unguarded directness of her gaze bridges the decade between the two portraits.
Born in Paris in 1738, Marie-Thérèse was the daughter of Marie-Catherine Marsollier, née Leleu (c.1716-1756) and René Marsollier, a wealthy silk merchant with business premises in the rue Saint-Honoré. According to an account written by the duc de Luynes just after her death, Madame Marsollier had married below her social station, a fact that never ceased to embarrass her. In an effort to placate his wife, Marsollier purchased the title of Secrétaire de Roi, elevating the couple to comte and comtesse de Neubourg. Nevertheless, it was said that she never entered her husband’s shop and would not set foot in the street in which it was located, leading her to be mocked as the ‘duchesse de velours’, or ‘Velvet Duchess’.
Whatever his social inferiority, as head of a firm that had supplied silk and luxury textiles to the court and aristocracy of Paris for four generations, René Marsollier amassed a great fortune (calculated at 1,500,000 livres) and, upon his death in 1763, Marie-Thérèse inherited all of it, leaving the young woman among the wealthiest heiresses in France. In 1756 she married Claude-Christophe Lorimier de Chamilly (1732-1794), later a valet de chambre to Louis XVI, and the couple had three children: Etienne (who died in infancy), Claude-René (1759-1837) and Octavie (1762-1849). Octavie would marry Louis, marquis de Pernon and both of Nattier’s portraits of her mother passed by descent through that family line until around 1910. Marie-Thérèse predeceased her husband in 1788 from unknown causes. Claude-Christophe, whose position at court brought him under suspicion after the arrest of the royal family in 1792, was imprisoned in the Luxembourg in February 1794, condemned as a counter-revolutionary and executed in June of that year.
If Nattier’s grand double portrait in the Metropolitan Museum was meant to emblematize Madame Marsollier’s wealth and status to a court nobility that she believed looked down on her, the present portrait of her daughter is instead intimate and reflective. Dispensing with the trappings of wealth and position that he was master at rendering, Nattier concentrated instead on his sitter’s beauty, and candid gaze, enveloping her with a warm sfumato that heightens the creaminess of her skin. Nattier’s soft atmospheric effects help to convey the gentleness of the young woman’s character.
In 1757, the year he painted the present portrait, Nattier also painted Manon Balletti (The National Gallery, London, inv. no. NG5586; fig. 2), Giacomo Casanova’s lover. Nattier’s well-known portrait of Balletti is virtually identical in size, format and composition to the Aitken portrait – in both, the vestal-like costumes decorated with strings of pearls are exactly the same, as is the silvery blue-gray palette, and both women wear identical muslin veils attached to their hair with a spray of flowers (a fashion introduced by Mme. de Pompadour a decade earlier). The only notable difference between the two is that Balletti wears a pink rose in her corsage rather than Mlle. Marsollier’s violet and blue bow. It was commonplace for Nattier to repeat his portrait compositions with only minor variations, allowing him to work more rapidly than entirely original compositions would have demanded.
A copy (or replica) of the present painting executed in oval format was sold at Fischer, Lucerne, 24-28 May 1982, lot 132.
Born in Paris in 1738, Marie-Thérèse was the daughter of Marie-Catherine Marsollier, née Leleu (c.1716-1756) and René Marsollier, a wealthy silk merchant with business premises in the rue Saint-Honoré. According to an account written by the duc de Luynes just after her death, Madame Marsollier had married below her social station, a fact that never ceased to embarrass her. In an effort to placate his wife, Marsollier purchased the title of Secrétaire de Roi, elevating the couple to comte and comtesse de Neubourg. Nevertheless, it was said that she never entered her husband’s shop and would not set foot in the street in which it was located, leading her to be mocked as the ‘duchesse de velours’, or ‘Velvet Duchess’.
Whatever his social inferiority, as head of a firm that had supplied silk and luxury textiles to the court and aristocracy of Paris for four generations, René Marsollier amassed a great fortune (calculated at 1,500,000 livres) and, upon his death in 1763, Marie-Thérèse inherited all of it, leaving the young woman among the wealthiest heiresses in France. In 1756 she married Claude-Christophe Lorimier de Chamilly (1732-1794), later a valet de chambre to Louis XVI, and the couple had three children: Etienne (who died in infancy), Claude-René (1759-1837) and Octavie (1762-1849). Octavie would marry Louis, marquis de Pernon and both of Nattier’s portraits of her mother passed by descent through that family line until around 1910. Marie-Thérèse predeceased her husband in 1788 from unknown causes. Claude-Christophe, whose position at court brought him under suspicion after the arrest of the royal family in 1792, was imprisoned in the Luxembourg in February 1794, condemned as a counter-revolutionary and executed in June of that year.
If Nattier’s grand double portrait in the Metropolitan Museum was meant to emblematize Madame Marsollier’s wealth and status to a court nobility that she believed looked down on her, the present portrait of her daughter is instead intimate and reflective. Dispensing with the trappings of wealth and position that he was master at rendering, Nattier concentrated instead on his sitter’s beauty, and candid gaze, enveloping her with a warm sfumato that heightens the creaminess of her skin. Nattier’s soft atmospheric effects help to convey the gentleness of the young woman’s character.
In 1757, the year he painted the present portrait, Nattier also painted Manon Balletti (The National Gallery, London, inv. no. NG5586; fig. 2), Giacomo Casanova’s lover. Nattier’s well-known portrait of Balletti is virtually identical in size, format and composition to the Aitken portrait – in both, the vestal-like costumes decorated with strings of pearls are exactly the same, as is the silvery blue-gray palette, and both women wear identical muslin veils attached to their hair with a spray of flowers (a fashion introduced by Mme. de Pompadour a decade earlier). The only notable difference between the two is that Balletti wears a pink rose in her corsage rather than Mlle. Marsollier’s violet and blue bow. It was commonplace for Nattier to repeat his portrait compositions with only minor variations, allowing him to work more rapidly than entirely original compositions would have demanded.
A copy (or replica) of the present painting executed in oval format was sold at Fischer, Lucerne, 24-28 May 1982, lot 132.