Louis Tocqué

Richard Seymour-Conway, 4^th Marquess of Hertford;
Sir Richard Wallace, 1^st Baronet, London;
By whom given to Sir John Murray Scott, London;
By whom bequeathed to Lady Victoria Sackville-West, Château de Bagatelle, Paris;
By whom sold to Jacques Seligmann, Paris, 1914;
With Germain Seligmann & Co., New York, 1929;
Confiscated from Jacques Seligmann by the Einsatzstab Reichleiter Rosenberg, Paris, November 1940 (inventory SEL 42) and transferred to the German Embassy, Paris (inventory Ib 54) and thereafter restituted through the Munich Central Collecting Point, July 31,1946 (inventory 213/2);
With Germain Seligmann & Co., New York, until at least 1951;
With Ben Elwes Fine Art, London;
From whom acquired by the present collector.

Pittsburgh, Carnegie Institute, French painting, 1100 - 1900, 18 October-2 December 1951, no. 89.  

A. Doria,  Louis Tocqué, Paris 1929, p. 130, under cat. no. 255, reproduced, fig. 116 (with incorrect measurements).

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This charming portrait has recently been restored. Is in lovely condition and should be hung as is. The only restoration of any note is a complex tear in the lower sky and the urn in the center of the right side. This is not visible to the naked eye and has been well retouched. The remainder of the painting is in splendid condition.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Louis Philippe Joseph, duc d'Orléans and duc de Chartres, later called Philippe Égalité was the cousin of King Louis XVI and the son of Louis-Philippe (later duc d'Orléans). He obtained the title of duc de Chartres in 1752, subsequently rising to his father's title in 1785. He was elected a representative for the nobles to the States General, which convened on May 5, 1789. Orléans supported the unprivileged Third Estate (commons) against the two privileged orders (nobles and clergy). On June 25 he and a small group of nobles joined the Third Estate, which had already (June 17) proclaimed itself a National Assembly. His Paris residence, the Palais-Royal, became a center of popular agitation, and he was viewed as a hero by the crowd that stormed the Bastille on July 14. On returning from a mission to England in July 1790, Orléans took a seat in the National Assembly. He was admitted to the politically radical Jacobin Club in 1791. After the fall of the monarchy in August 1792, he renounced his title of nobility and accepted the name Philippe Égalité from the Paris Commune, one of the popular Revolutionary bodies.

Tocqué executed this composition on at least two separate occasions. In addition to the present work, he exhibited the probable prime version in the Salon of 1755, a work recorded in the collection of Édouard de Rothschild (see Doria, op.cit.).  This picture once formed part of the celebrated collections of Richard Seymour-Conway, 4^th Marquess of Hertford, and subsequently his illegitimate son Sir Richard Wallace. Though this picture eventually left the collection through its sale to the French dealer Jacques Seligmann (see Provenance), the majority of the Wallace collection helped to form the illustrious museum which bears his name.