* Henri-Pierre Danloux Paris 1753 - 1809

Estate of the Baron de Besenval, Paris and Geneva, 1791;
Joseph-Alexandre, Vicomte de Ségur, 1805;
Lieutenant-Général Charles-Louis, styled Marquis de Chérisey, 1827, by descent in the Chériséy family;
Comte de Chérisey sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, June 16, 1909, lot 4, there sold for 27,000 francs to Prince François de Broglie;
Prince François de Broglie, Paris, until 1930;
Princesse Amédéé de Broglie, née Princess Beatrix de Faucigny-Lucinge, until 1984;
With Stair Sainty Matthiessen;
From whom acquired by the present collector May 20, 1986.

Paris, Hôtel de Rohan, Les Grandes Heures de l'Amitié Franco-Suisse, 1967;
New York, China Institute of America, Chinese Porcelains in European Mounts, 1980-81, no. 34;
New York, Stair Sainty Matthiesen, An Aspect of Collecting Taste, 1986, no. 17;
New York, Colnaghi, 1789:  French Art During the Revolution, 1989, no. 8;
Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada; Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art; Berlin, Gemaldegalerie,  French Genre Painting in the Age of Watteau, Chardin and Fragonard:  Masterpieces of French Genre Painting, 2003, no. 105.

A.J. Paillet, Catalogue de tableaux précieux, dessins, gouaches et miniatures (de M. Besenval), Paris, 1795;
R. de Portalis, Henri-Pierre Danloux, Paris 1910, pp. 44-49, reproduced p. 45;
P. de Vallière, "Une grande figure suisse au XVIIIe siècle," Versailles, 3, Paris 1960, pp. 9-25;
S. Doumic, "Residences suisses à Paris au XVIIIe siècles," Versailles, 3, Paris 1960, pp. 37-41;
F.J.B. Watson and G. Wilson, Mounted Oriental Porcelain in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu 1982, p. 14, reproduced;
A. van de Sandt, Les Frères Sablet, exhibition catalogue, Nantes, Lausanne, Rome, 1985, pp. 134-136;
C.B. Bailey, "Conventions of  the Eighteenth Century Cabinet de Tableaux: Blondel d' Azincourt's La Première idée de la curiosité," The Art Bulletin, vol. LXIX, no. 3, September 1987, p. 440, reproduced p. 12;
P. Arizzoli-Clementel, "Les Arts du Décor", in p. Bordes and R. Michel, Aux Armes et Aux Arts: Les Arts de la Révolution 1789-1799, Paris 1988, pp. 285-286, reproduced p. 250;
C. Arnaud, "Le Comte d'Artois et sa Coterie", in La Folie d'Artois, Paris 1988, p. 25, reproduced;
C. Bailey, The Age of Watteau, Chardin and Fragonard.  Masterpieces of French Genre Painting, exhibition catalogue, Ottawa, Washington and Berlin, 2003 - 2004, cat. no. 105, reproduced p. 335, discussed p. 334 and p. 375;
E. Munhall, Greuze the Draftsman, exhibition catalogue, The Frick Collection, New York and the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 2002, reproduced p. 133, fig. 107.

Danloux’s Portrait of the Duc de Besenval (1721 – 1791) serves as an important tribute to aristocratic collecting in late eighteenth century France.  In fact, Colin Bailey describes this picture as Danloux’s “most accomplished Parisian portrait” and notes that this intimate picture “deserves to be known as the single oil painting produced in the 18^th century of a French private collector in his picture cabinet” (see Literature below).  This picture represents Danloux’s last major portrait commission before he left France.  Painted in the first half of 1791, it depicts Besenval in his seventieth year shortly before his death.  Besenval, Commander-in-Chief of the ill-fated Swiss Guards, was largely responsible for maintaining loyalty and order to the French Crown in the turbulent days after the establishment of the French National Assembly (17 June, 1789). With the onset of the storming of the Bastille he attempted to flee to his native Switzerland but was incarcerated en route.  Besenval was imprisoned in the Château de Brie-Comte-Robert before being taken back to Paris where he was held at the Châtelet prison charged with lèse-nation. He was acquitted of these charges and freed in January 1790 and remained out of the political and military Parisian circles.  This portrait dates to only one year later. Besenval’s calm, introspective pose offers no allusion to the turbulent political events he had witnessed in Paris the year before, and does not hint at the collapse of the establishment to which he was so integrally tied.  Instead it depicts an aristocratic and rarefied world that is soon to become extinct.

Despite a prominent political and military position, it was as a collector that Besenval achieved his greatest renown, and it was in this role that Danloux chooses to so handsomely remember him. Danloux depicts the Swiss connoisseur in his luxuriously elegant salon de compagnie sitting reverently amongst his masterpieces.  In March 1769 Besenval was rewarded for his commitment to the arts and elected to the position of Associé Libre of the Academie Royale de Peinture et Sculpture and promoted further to the position of Amateur - honoraire in February 1784.  Besenval was one of the most eminent collectors of Dutch and Flemish cabinet pictures living in Paris in the late Eighteenth Century.  His eclectic tastes also encompassed eighteenth century French and Italian painting, antique sculpture, and fine pieces of Chinese porcelain.   In fact, the garniture on the mantle includes a ewer in the middle, which is a porcelain carp jumping from waves, set in a gilt mount, a style very popular in Paris at the time.  There is a black chalk study for the portrait that reveals initially Danloux had conceived the painting with Besenval seated in his armchair, his face turned towards the viewer (see Figure 1).  The final composition depicts Besenval turned inwards with his gaze in the direction of his three handsome pieces of the pale blue celadon porcelain mounted in 18^th century ormolu.  He appears distant and contemplative, a much more enigmatic character than he might have been had he looked directly out at us. 

In the eighteenth century there seems to have been a general reluctance by collectors to the idea of being painted with their art collections.  It is possible that Danloux suggested the composition to Besenval, although Bailey also suggests the possibility that the conception might borrow from an interior by van Blarenberghe in the collection of Besenval’s peer the Duc de Choiseul noting, “as an interior view, Danloux’s portrait cannot but recall van Blarenberghe’s miniature view of Choiseul’s picture cabinet, commissioned to decorate a celebrated snuff box…Besenval, as an intimate of Choiseul’s, must have handled the box on more than one occasion” (op. cit., p. 109-110). 

The small scale of this portrait coupled with Danloux’s highly finished, refined technique and attention to detail echo the qualities Besenval so admired in his treasured Dutch cabinet pictures.  Besenvals’s fine collection of Dutch and Flemish cabinet pictures included pictures by Gabriel Metsu, David Teniers, and Willem van de Velde examples of which Danloux represents in miniature with great fidelity in this refined portrait.   

The Abbé Lebrun listed Besenval’s cabinet in his 1777 Guide Book as "un riche cabinet de tableaux de Trois Ecoles" ("a rich cabinet of paintings from the three schools of painting").  And the collection was described in more detail by L.V. Thiéry in his, Guide des Amateurs et des Etrangers voyageurs à Paris, published in 1784 and 1787.  Thiéry emphasized that this collection included "de morceaux choisis des meilleurs maîtres des trois écoles" ("pieces chosen from the best masters of the three schools of painting").  

The seven pictures painted behind Besenval are hung in traditional cabinet style stacked one on top of the other without regard for school or chronology, offering us a rare insight into the style of picture hanging and framing in 18th century France.  The pictures are displayed against green damask, which we know was the traditional fabric used as a backcloth in France.   The mixing of schools was a feature of many aristocratic collectors in Paris in the 1770’s and 1780’s.  The pictures depicted are all testament to Besenval's rarefied and eclectic collecting eye. 

Thiéry’s listing allows us to identify the individual works represented by Danloux, "Cabinet des Tableaux…dans le Salon…du côté de la cheminée…Deux jolis tableaux de Corneille de Poelemburg.  Un tableau de David Teniers, et un autre de Jacques Ostade.  Un intérieur d’église par Steenvick.  Un charmant paysage de Kuyp.  Deux marines par Guillaume Vandevelden.  Une Danae par Carle Maratte.  Une Léda du meme… " ("Cabinet of Paintings…in the Salon…next to the chimney…Two pretty paintings by Cornelis Poelenburgh.  A Painting by David Teniers, and another by Isaac Ostade.  An Interior of a Church by Steenwick.  A charming landscape by Cuyp.  Two marine scenes by Willem van de Velde.  A Danae by Carlo Maratti.  A Leda by the same hand…") (see L.V. Thiéry, Guide des Amateurs et des Etrangers voyageurs à Paris, 2 vols., Paris 1787, vol. 2, p. 577.)  The description and attributions made by Thiéry can be further supported by comparison with the auction listing made by A. J. Paillet for the celebrated auction of Besenval’s collection held in Paris 10 August, 1795 (see A.J. Paillet, Catalogue de tableaux précieux, dessins, gouaches et miniatures (de M. Besenval), Paris 29 Thermidor an III (10 August 1795) -- Lugt 5356).  Hanging on the wall, we can make out at the top of the canvas the lower edge of an oval frame which we know from Thierry's inventory held either the Danae or Leda painted by Maratti.  Underneath the Maratti hangs a small painting by Cornelis Poelenburgh from his Italian period.  Below the Poelenburgh is a small Portrait of Poelenburgh, described by Thierry as "Un autre petit tableau de la première finesse représentant un portrait d'artiste" ("another small painting of the highest quality representing a portrait of the artist").  To the right of the Maratti hangs Van de Velde's Calm Sea, of which we can only see the lower half .  Below it hangs a David Teniers, Interior Scene with a Young Woman and a Man at a Table.     To the right of the Teniers we can make out an Adam Pynacker, Landscape and above it hangs a painting by Albrecht Cuyp, Landscape with horses and figures.  In the mirror we see the reflection of what could be the Vernet Neopolitan coastal scenes described as hanging opposite the chimney in Thierry's inventory.   These pictures remain unlocated in present day collections and the attributions therefore remain tentative.