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Lot Essay
Princess Amelia was the second wife of Pedro I of Brazil, daughter of Eugene de Beauharnais and grand-daughter of Empress Josephine and Maximilian I of Bavaria. She married Pedro I in 1829, following the death of his first wife, the Austrian Archduchess Maria Leopoldina, in 1826. She arrived as Her Imperial Majesty, the Empress of Brazil, in Rio de Janeiro in October 1829 and returned to Europe in 1831 with her husband following his abdication. Her only child, Princess Maria Amelia of Brazil, was born in Paris in October 1831. After her husband's death from tuberculosis in 1834 she settled in Portugal and devoted herself to charitable causes. Her daughter died of tuberculosis in Funchal in 1853. Both mother and daughter had their status as members of the Brazilian Imperial family restored by Don Pedro II, and many of Amelia's effects were sent to the Imperial Palace in Petrópolis following her death aged 60 in 1873. Her remains were transported to the crypt of the Monument to the Independence of Brazil in Sao Paulo in 1982.
The present composition is repeated in a portrait by Ignaz Fertig (1809-1858) in the Museu Imperial, Petrópolis, either a copy of Nachtmann's portrait or its model, for which see G. Sanmartini, Casa de Bragança - Casa de Hasburgo, Origem da Família Imperial Brasileira, Rio de Janeiro, 1998, p.39. Other variants in watercolour are known. Nachtmann was a Munich-trained artist who worked as a flower painter for the Nymphenburg Porcelain Factory in the 1820s, and the fine stipple technique of the porcelain painter is evident in the present portrait. He specialised in portraits of German nobility, interiors and still lifes.
The present composition is repeated in a portrait by Ignaz Fertig (1809-1858) in the Museu Imperial, Petrópolis, either a copy of Nachtmann's portrait or its model, for which see G. Sanmartini, Casa de Bragança - Casa de Hasburgo, Origem da Família Imperial Brasileira, Rio de Janeiro, 1998, p.39. Other variants in watercolour are known. Nachtmann was a Munich-trained artist who worked as a flower painter for the Nymphenburg Porcelain Factory in the 1820s, and the fine stipple technique of the porcelain painter is evident in the present portrait. He specialised in portraits of German nobility, interiors and still lifes.