Description

The volatile events of the early years of the French Revolution make it impossible to determine with certainty the date of Jacques-Louis David’s warm, fresh portrait of Adélaïde de Pastoret. They also probably account for the portrait’s unfinished state. David, a renowned Neoclassical painter, was at the time an ardent revolutionary; Madame de Pastoret was the wife of a staunch royalist. The sittings must have occurred after the birth, early in 1791, of her son, who is portrayed asleep by her side, and before her brief imprisonment during the Reign of Terror in 1792. Here David completed the stippled, almost monochromatic underpainting but did not create the stark, enamel-smooth surface that is characteristic of his finished paintings. He did not even get far enough to place a needle and thread in Madame de Pastoret’s hand. Nevertheless, this large portrait of unaffected domesticity captures the youthful mother with charm as well as dignity and displays David’s skill as a portraitist. Objecting to David’s revolutionary ideals, Madame de Pastoret (who became the Marquise de Pastoret in 1817) refused the painting during the artist’s lifetime. After David’s death, she had her son, by then an adult, purchase the portrait from the artist’s estate.

Provenance

In the artist’s possession until his death in 1825; inventoried on February 27, 1826, at the apartment of his son Eugène, rue Cadet no. 11, Paris; sold in David’s atelier sale, rue du Gros-Chenet no. 4, Paris, April 17, 1826, no. 16, for Fr 400, to Révile, acting on behalf of Emmanuel de Pastoret [price and buyer recorded in David 1880 and the 1897 sale catalogue]. Claude Emmanuel Joseph Pierre, marquis de Pastoret (died 1840), Château de Fleury-Meudon, Seine-et-Oise; by descent to his granddaughter, Marie de Pastoret (died 1890), who in 1835 married Hervé de Rougé, marquis du Plessis-Bellière; sold Hôtel Drouot, Paris, May 10–11, 1897, no. 21, for Fr 17,900, to Chéramy [La chronique des arts 1897 and Meier-Graefe and Klossowski 1908]; Paul Alfred Chéramy, Paris; sold Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, May 5–7, 1908, no. 44 (ill.), for Fr 41,000, to Georges Petit, Paris [American Art News 1908; the buyer is given by Schnapper in Paris 1974/75]. Comtesse Joachim Murat (née Thérèse Bianchi; died 1940), Paris, by 1909 [lent by her to Paris 1909]; at her death to her sister, vicomtesse Fleury (née Renée Bianchi; died 1948); at her death to vicomte Fleury; sold to Wildenstein, New York, c. 1965 [according to telephone conversation of Joseph Baillio with Susan Wise, March 4, 1988, note in curatorial file]; sold to the Art Institute, 1967.

Madame de Pastoret and Her Son

Jacques Louis David

1791–92

Accession Number

27307

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

129.8 × 96.6 cm (51 1/8 × 38 in.); French: 156.3 × 123.6 cm (61 1/2 × 48 5/8 in.)

Classification

oil on canvas

Museum

The Art Institute of Chicago

Chicago, United States

Credit Line

Clyde M. Carr Fund and Major Acquisitions Endowment