William Hopkins Craft

Pelham Galleries, London;

From whom acquired by Aso O. Tavitian at TEFAF Maastricht, 2008.

The sitter was the daughter of Marquis Guillaume François de Cepoy and Élisabeth Amaranthe Jogues de Martinville. In 1784 she married Count Georges Louis Marie Leclerc de Buffon (1764-1794) and during the same year she became Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orleans’s mistress. This portrait was painted in 1790, when the Countess and Duke were in London. It appears to be derived from an oil painting, by an unknown French hand, that is dated 1788.¹ An enamel portrait by Craft of the Duke of Orleans is in the Musée du Louvre; Paris, that work is also dated 1790.

Craft was born in London and exhibited at Royal Academy between 1774 to 1795. 

¹Formerly with Etienne Levy, Paris