* Jean-Marc Nattier Paris 1685 - 1766

Baron Alphonse de Rothschild, Paris;
With Newhouse Galleries, New York, from whom acquired by;
Mr. and Mrs. Kay Kimbell, by whom given in 1955 to;
Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas;
Property of the Kimbell Art Foundation, Sotheby's, New York, June 4, 1987, lot 168, where acquired by the present collectors 

Anne Henriette (1727-1752),  known as Madame Henriette, was with her twin sister Louise- Élisabeth (herself later Duchess of Parma), the eldest daughter of Louis XV and Queen Marie Leczynska.  Her early death at the age of 24 was much mourned, and she seems to have been a favorite of (and steadying force on) her royal father.    Jeanne Louise Henriette Genet, Madame Campan, lady in waiting to the young Dauphine Marie Antoinette observed Henriette's hold on the king:  " Madame Henriette... had considerable influence over the King's mind, and it was remarked that if she had lived she would have been assiduous in finding him amusements in the bosom of his family, would have followed him in his short excursions, and would have done the honours of the 'petits soupers' which he was so fond of giving in his private apartments."

The present painting is an autograph reinterpreation of a painting by Nattier of Madame Henriette from a set of four canvases, now in the Museu de Arte de Sao Paulo.  This series represented each of the four oldest surviving daughters of Louis XV as one of the four elements: Madame Infante (Louise-Élisabeth) as Earth, Madame Adélaïde as Air, and Madame Victoire as Water.  Madame Henriette herself is shown as Fire, in the guise of an a Vestal Virgin.  She is shown holding the Abbé de Nadal's Histoire des Vestales, avec un Traité de luxe des dames romanes published in 1725 to make the allegory perfectly clear.  The four paintings were ordered by Louis, Dauphin of France apparently late in 1749; in a document dated January 11, 1750, Lenormant de Tournehem, the Directeur Général des Bâtiments du roi, records the commission.  The four canvases, horizontal in composition, were to be placed in the "grand cabinet" of the Dauphin in his new rooms in Versailles.  The compositions were extremely grand as is noted in the "mémoire" made after their delivery, they were of "grandeur naturelle....chacun 3 pieds 3 pouces de haut sur 4 pieds 3 pouces de large."  The series remained there until at least 1794, when they are recorded by the artist Durameau in an inventory he made of the collection at Versailles, and were probably removed shortly thereafter.

The present work would appear to be the second version of the Portrait of Madame Henriette which was ordered in 1761 by the royal family after Nattier's earlier version in Sao Paulo. Unlike the paintings for the Dauphin, the present painting is in the more traditional upright format for a portrait (the Dauphin's paintings were used as overdoors).  Nattier has changed some other elements of the composition.  Henriette leans on the altar of fire sacred to Vesta in the first painting; in the present painting it is relegated to the background.  Nattier places a large red drape to border the right edge of the composition, practically his only use of color in an otherwise opalescent palette.

Fernand Engerard (cf Inventaire des tableaux commandés et achetés par la direction des Batiment du Roi 1709-1792) noted that among the works ordered by the royal family, there was a second version of the Portrait of Madame Henriette listed which was valued at 1,300 livres. He suggested that, the painting was likely to be the version at the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Pau (inv. D.62.1., on loan from the Louvre).  Salmon, however, discusses this situation at length (see Literature below, pp. 227-8).  The picture at Pau is in fact a copy of a lost original by Nattier which depicts Madame Infante as a Vestal (hence the confusion).  He goes on to note about the present painting that "la qualité de la matière et surtout le traitement poudreux des chairs invitent à y reconnaître la réplique de la main de Nattier [the quality of the paint surface and above all the powdery handling of the fleshtones lead one to recognize the replica of the hand of Nattier]."