Pierre Paul Prud'hon (Cluny 1758-1823 Paris)

The subject of Prud'hon's portrait is Marie Adrienne Hervé Louise de Carbonnel de Canisy whose first husband (and uncle) was Louis Emmanuel de Canisy, equerry to Napoléon Bonaparte. After divorcing Canisy, she married in 1814 Armand Augustin Louis de Caulaincourt (1773-1827), a military officer and one of the members of the ancient aristocracy favored by the Emperor. (On 7 June 1808, Caulaincourt had been created Duc de Vicence.) The Duchesse was lady-in-waiting to Empress Josephine and was considered one of the most beautiful women in the Imperial Court. The portrait - several copies of which are known, one of which appeared at auction in Paris, Droûot Richelieu, 28 June 1996, lot 82 - probably dates from 1814 and may have been made to commemorate the sitter's second wedding.

Although Prud'hon confessed that he did not especially enjoy painting portraits, he was a master of the genre and fulfilled many commissions during the Restoration. Astonishingly varied in their simplicity and marked by a note of gentle melancholy, Prud'hon's last portraits mark a high point in the history of French portraiture. As the Goncourts observed (1895), 'in the last and most beautiful portraits by the master... you will find these individuals of spiritual breadth, moral vitality, intimate ideality, penetrating beauty...'.