Piat Joseph Sauvage (1744-1818)

THE PROPERTY OF A GENTLEMAN According to family tradition, the following three miniatures were given by King Louis XVI of France to Jean-Baptiste-Pierre-Antoine de Monet, chevalier de Lamarck (1744-1829), an officer in the regiment of Beaujolais who abandoned his military career in favour of his passion for natural science. Lamarck's publications as a botanist were so impressive that he was admitted to the Académie des Sciences and later became a professor of zoology in 1794. He was later awarded the Order of the Legion of Honour. Louise, a child from his three marriages, married Jules Callon and the miniatures are now sold by a direct descendant of the latter. It is interesting to compare the present three miniatures with the matching seven Royal miniatures by Sauvage of circa 1791 from the collection of the Marquis de Villefranche (ill. in François Laurentie, Louis XVII, Paris, 1913, no. 72). The Villefranche Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette miniature appears to be a sketch for the Lamarck version. Whereas Madame Royale and the Dauphin are painted en brochette in the present miniature, the Marquis de Villefranche owned two single miniatures of the Royal children. No miniature of Madame Elisabeth of France by Sauvage seems to be hitherto recorded. The present group is therefore a precious addition to the iconography of the Royal French Family during the Revolution.

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Piat Joseph Sauvage (1744-1818)

A double portrait of King Louis XVI (1754-1793) and Queen Marie-Antoinette (1755-1793) of France, in profile to sinister, en grisaille on a blue ground, she with a rope of pearls in her curly hair, he wearing a curled wig with long coils

signed, bottom right 'Sauvage'
2 3/8in. (60mm.) diam., gilt-metal frame with blue enamel border