Victor Amédée Faure (Paris, 1801-1878) Portrait... Lot 14

Victor Amédée Faure (Paris, 1801-1878) Portrait of H.R.H. Louis Charles d'Orléans, Count of Beaujolais. Canvas signed lower right, and dated 1835. Monogram of King Louis-Philippe on the back with the number 1580. 230 cm high, 117 cm wide (accident). Provenance: - personal order of King Louis-Philippe I, 1835, for the castle of Eu, his summer residence where Queen Victoria was received in 1843, then again in 1845. - by descent, sale of the estate of H.R.H. Monseigneur le Duc de Nemours, Mes Ader et Picard, Paris, March 10, 1971, n°10. - Collection of President and Madame Giscard d'Estaing, Château de l'Étoile. A 1835 portrait of HRH Louis Charles d'Orléans, Earl of Beaujolais. Oil on canvas. Signed and dated. Ordered by King Louis-Philippe for his summer residence of château d'Eu. Related works: Victor Amédée Faure, "Antoine Philippe d'Orléans, duc de Montpensier" and "Louis Charles d'Orléans, comte de Beaujolais", a pair of portraits (219 x 117 cm), commissioned in 1839 for the Museum of French History at the Château de Versailles and exhibited at the Salon of 1840 (no. 555); since June 14, 1933 exhibited in the historical apartments of the Château de Compiègne (no. INV. 4370 and INV. 4372). Having become King in 1830 under the name of Louis-Philippe I, the Duke of Orleans initiated a vast campaign of artistic commissions aimed at reconciling the French with their history and inscribing his reign in the national narrative. In June 1837, the Historical Galleries dedicated to "all the glories of France" were inaugurated at the Château de Versailles. Victor Amédée Faure benefited greatly from the royal patronage, becoming one of the official painters of the Orleans family. In 1835, he painted two large portraits of the monarch's younger and younger brothers, Louis-Charles, for the Château d'Eu, replicas of which are kept in Compiègne. He represents the two brothers of the sovereign, who died prematurely, underlining their presence on the revolutionary battlefields. From May to July 1792, the Count of Beaujolais, aged twelve, accompanied his father the Duke of Orleans to the front where his brothers the Dukes of Montpensier and Chartres, the future Louis-Philippe, were serving. These portraits were then passed on to the descendants of the Duke of Nemours, Louis-Philippe's eldest son. The Count of Beaujolais (Paris, 1779-1808, Malta), in whose honor a street is named in Paris, wears a sword at his side and a tricolor cockade on his hat. Against the background of a romantic landscape, with half-length hair and light eyes, he is posed in traveling clothes, with spurs on his feet. Louis-Philippe's youngest brother, arrested at the Palais Royal, was incarcerated as a child during the Terror until 1796, before being reunited with his elder brother in Philadelphia in 1797, and traveling through the young United States of America. Settled in England in 1800, he died of a chest illness in Malta, where he is buried, while the Duke of Orleans accompanied him to solicit the hand of one of the daughters of King Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies. A replica of his recumbent, by James Pradier, left the Versailles museum in 1986 and is installed in the royal chapel in Dreux.