‘Portrait of Clémentine de Boubers, Baronne Renouard de Bussierre’ (1854) by Hermann Winterhalter @ Sotheby’s Paris

Portrait of Clémentine de Boubers, Baronne Renouard de Bussierre (1854), by Hermann Winterhalter, @ Sotheby’s Paris

The aformentioned auction featured a portrait of Mélanie de Pourtalès’s sister-in-law, Clémentine de Boubers, Baronne Paul Renouard de Bussierre (1829-1861), by the hand of Hermann Winterhalter.

The baroness is painted at the age of 25, at just over half-length, posed frontally, with her face in semi-profile to the right. She is wearing an evening gown of white satin over a lace-edged under-blouse, with white silk bows at the sleeves and the waist. Apart from the corsage of pink roses and a golden wedding band at the base of the ring finger, the baroness wears no other jewellery or visible decorations.

The provenance of the portrait is unclear. The portraits of the sitter, her husband, and her sister are framed identically, suggesting that they were at one stage in the same collection. As Clémentine and her husband had no children, it is likely that their portraits may have passed to her sister-in-law, Mélanie de Pourtalès, and thence, by family descent, to Christian, Comte de Pourtalès, at Château de Martinsvart, from whose collection it was offered at Collection Schickler-Pourtalès: Art et Pouvoir au XIXe siècle, by Sotheby’s Paris, on 16 May 2019.

Clémentine’s white dress may suggest that the portrait references her marriage two years’ prior. The three states of the roses—wilting, blooming, and budding—are quite unusual in the context of a formal portrait, and may indicate Hermann Winterhalter’s own allegoric and moralising touch. The lack of jewellery broadly corresponds with the prevalent depictions of French aristocracy in the middle of the nineteenth century, and especially during—or shortly after—the Second Republic. It also may indicate the sitter’s personal piety and the lack of ostentatious tastes, reflective of her Protestant faith.

Offered with the estimate of € 30,000-40,000, the portrait appears to have found no buyers. Although Hermann Winterhalter may have been as talented as his celebrated older brother, his art market performance remains relatively modest.

© Dr Eugene Barilo von Reisberg, 16 July 2019

Winterhalter’s ‘Portrait of Countess Olga Esperovna Shuvalova’ @ Christie’s in Paris

I was thrilled to see the above portrait to come up for sale at Christie’s in Paris, in their Tableaux anciens et du XIXème siècle sale on 25 June 2019.

The portrait represents Countess Olga Shuvalova (1838-69, née Princess Beloselskaia-Belozerskaia) at the age of thirty two. She is painted in an oval format, knee-length, seated, against a neutral background of golden-honey yellows. While she is painted en face, her light-brown eyes look upwards; her gaze transcends the picture plane. Her light-brown hair is dressed with a wreath of ivy leaves with garlands of green and purple acacia-style flowers. She is wearing a low-cut evening gown of white tulle, edged with lace, and decorated with an ivy-leaf corsage. A tasseled cream-coloured shawl, thrown over her right shoulder and the right arm, completes the Countess’s toilette. She rests an elbow on her knee, with fingers lightly supporting her chin. Unusually for a portrait of a Russian noblewoman in Winterhalter’s oeuvre, the Countess appears to be wearing no jewellery.

The portrait clearly forms a pendant to the portrait of the sitter’s husband, Count Pavel Shuvalov (1860, oil on canvas, Private Collection, cat. no. 687; illustrated in the previous post). Both portraits are carried out in a similar oval format, are roughly of the similar size, and are framed identically. As such, this is perhaps one of the very few known pendant portraits by Winterhalter of non-royal sitters.

The auction catalogue did not provide clear provenance for the portrait. While further research is still required, it is highly possible that both portraits were at one stage in the Demidov Collection until its dispersal by Christie’s in 1934.

Estimated at EUR 80,000-120,000, the portrait sold for EUR 150,000, demonstrating that the prices for Winterhalter’s portraits on the auction market have remained relatively steady.

The portrait is given a provisional number 688 in the current version of my catalogue raisonné.

© Dr Eugene Barilo von Reisberg, 30 June 2019