François Pascal Simon Gérard, called Baron Gérard Rome 1770 - 1837 Paris

Duc de Maillé, château de Châteauneuf-sur-Cher, près de Bourges;
With Didier Aaron, Inc., New York, by 1991, there purchased by the present collector.

Alain Latreille, in a private communication of June 24, 1991, confirmed the attribution of this portrait to François Gérard.  He will include this picture in his forthcoming catalogue raisonné on the artist.

A descendent of an old family from Touraine, Blanche-Joséphine Le Bascle d’Argenteuil was born in Paris in 1787 in the Hotel Particulier of her family at 85 rue du Faubourg St. Honoré.  During the Revolution they left France, living in Switzerland and Germany before returning during the Directoire.  In 1811, she married Charles-Alexandre-Armand de Maillé de La Tour-Landry (1770-1837), the 2^nd duc de Maillé, who was eighteen years her senior, and they settled in the Château  de Lormois in the Paris suburbs.  They had two sons, Jacquelin (1815-1874), the 3^rd duc de Maillé, and Armand (1816-1903).  During the Restoration, she was première dame d’honneur of the Duchesse de Berry and her husband served as premier gentilhomme of the King’s Chamber.  Her status at court was apparently not gratifying and of the Duchesse, she said “pour plaire à Madame la duchesse de Berry, il faut tre frivole, bête et ultra...Je ne remplis acune de ces conditions”¹ (to please Madame duchess of Berry, you must be frivolous, stupid and ultra...I do not fill any of these conditions).  With her cousin, the Marquise de Crillon, she founded the Société du Château which sought to bring together an intellectual group for discussions on art, music and literature.  Having fallen out of favor at court with the accession of Louis-Philippe, of whom she was highly critical, the Duchesse de Maillé presided over a Salon which, from 1832 until her death, was a gathering place for writers, artists and politicians.  She received her guests every Thursday in her house in Paris on the rue de Lille, near St. Germain-des-Pres.  The Duchesse de Maillé was the author of two narratives which have proved to be fascinating accounts of the period, beginning with her Souvenirs des Deux Restaurations written between 1814 and 1830.  Later, she authored her Mémoires (1832-1851) which chronicle the literary and political life in Paris from the Restoration to the accession of Napoleon III and bring to life many of the personalitites of the period, including Honoré de Balzac and Alphonse de Lamartine.

1  cited by F. d'Agay in the Introduction to her Memoires, 1989, p. 6.