Henri-Pierre Danloux

Georges Hoentschel (1855-1915), Paris;

Vicomte Albert de Curel (1827-1908) and Vicomtesse Joséphine de Curel (née de Wendel; 1832-1915), Paris;

Their estate sale ("Collection du Vicomte de Curel"), Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, 25 November 1918, lots 27, 28, for 88,700 francs;

Private collection, France

With Didier Aaron, Paris;

From whom acquired by Aso O. Tavitian, 2017.

R. Portalis, Henry-Pierre Danloux peintre de portraits et son journal durant l'émigration (1753-1809), Paris 1910, p. 14, reproduced opp. pp. 57, 61;

O. Meslay, "Henry-Pierre Danloux (1753-1809), sa carrière avant l'exil en Angleterre," Bulletin de la Société de l'histoire de l'art français (2006), pp. 227-228, reproduced figs. 31, 32.

Henri-Pierre Danloux executed these pendant portraits between 1783 and 1784, before the Parisian artist was forced into exile at the dawn of the French Revolution. He depicts the baron and baroness of Nully with both sincerity and a touch of spontaneity. Their attire, rendered with Danloux’s typical attention to chromatic harmony, conveys a fresh sense of informality. 

Shown with unpowdered and slightly tousled hair, the baroness is portrayed deshabillé in her white morning gown, suggesting an unexpected intimacy between spectator and subject. Indeed, it is as if she is returning the immutable gaze of her husband, who would have looked upon her portrait and whose pendant hung beside her. Galliot de Mandat-Grancey (1733-1805), Baron de Nully, a native of the Haute-Marne, was an important military officer. In 1750, he entered the King’s Musketeers, or Mousquetaires du Roi, rising to the rank of Chevalier de l’Ordre de Saint-Louis in 1763. On 4 November 1764, he married the baroness, Marie-Françoise-Charlotte (née Petit de Lavaux; 1746-1809); together, they had five sons and two daughters.