Travelers by the shore

This painting bears on its reverse the crest of Marie Caroline Ferdinande Louise, Duchess of Berry (1798-1879). Born to King Francis I of the Two Sicilies and his first wife Maria Clementina of Austria, she became the second wife of Charles Ferdinand, Duke of Berry and son of Charles X of France. In 1820, Charles Ferdinand was stabbed and mortally wounded in Paris, and his widow was obliged to flee to Holyrood when King Charles X was overthrown during the July revolution. The Duchess returned to her family in Naples for a time, before attempting to restore the Bourbon dynasty in order to secure the throne of France for her son Henri, Comte de Chambord. Her failed rebellion of 1832 landed her in prison in the castle of Blaye, until she gave birth to a daughter in 1833 and it was revealed that she had secretly married an Italian nobleman, Ettore Count Lucchesi Palli, Prince di Campofranco, Duke della Grazia. No longer a threat to the Orléanist monarch, King Louis Philippe, and the French government, she was released to her family in Sicily. Duchesse Marie Caroline died in 1870, and was memorialized in two stories by the French novelist Alexandre Dumas, père.