Marie-Victoire Jaquotot - Lot 177

Marie-Victoire Jaquotot Miniature on porcelain depicting a portrait of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria. On the reverse, the inscription: Marie Thérèse d'après le portrait original, par Madame Jaquotot, Paris 1828. Charles X period, 1828. L. 7 cm X 5.5 cm. A small chip on the edge. Former F. Dörling Collection, Hamburg. This miniature is an autograph replica of the one painted in 1822 by Madame Jaquotot for the Tabatière du Roi. It was copied from a portrait by the artist Joseph Ducreux. Ducreux was sent to Vienna in 1769 to paint the Archduchess Marie-Antoinette, so that her future husband (the Duc de Berry, future Louis XVI) could have a picture of her. He also painted her mother, Empress Marie-Thérèse, and this image was engraved the following year by Jacob Schmuzer. It was most likely this engraving that Madame Jaquotot copied. Jaquotot's 1822 portrait of Maria Theresa was part of a group of oval miniatures intended to decorate a gold snuffbox for King Louis XVIII. Each day, the king could choose a miniature to insert in the snuffbox lid. The miniatures and their Sèvres porcelain case are now in the Louvre, while the snuffbox itself has disappeared. Our miniature is included in the artist's catalog raisonné by Anne Lajoix among the entirely autographed works under number P 194, with the following comment: "Here is an example of a miniature painted on porcelain, of the same format as the portraits intended for the Tabatière du Roi, for which we have no archive. Fortunately, aware of the price of her signature, the artist almost always affixed it. According to Anne Lajoix, the oval miniatures in the Tabatière du Roi are not in Sèvres porcelain, but were painted by Jaquotot on sketches supplied by the Nast porcelain factory. It is therefore likely that the porcelain used for this miniature was also made in Paris. See Anne Lajoix, Marie-Victoire Jaquotot (1772-1855), peintre sur porcelaine, 2006, no. P.194.