A previously unpublished portrait of the Duke of Penthièvre, Admiral of France, attributed to Carle van Loo

This portrait depicts the Duke of Penthièvre, recognisable not only by his features (see the portraits held in Toulouse, at the Bemberg Foundation; Versailles, at the Palaces of Versailles and Trianon; and Sceaux, at the Musée du Domaine Départemental de Sceaux). He wears the Order of the Golden Fleece and the Order of the Holy Spirit on his breastplate.

Louis-Jean-Marie de Bourbon was appointed Admiral of France in 1734, then Governor and Lieutenant-General of Brittany on a survival basis in 1736. He was made a Knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece in 1740 and then a Knight of the Order of the Holy Spirit in 1742. The portrait painted by Jean-Marc Nattier (of which several studio versions, both full-length and bust, are held at the Bemberg Foundation or in the Georges de Lastic Collection) depicts him in his youth, after the Battle of Fontenoy in which he took part (1745), well before Aulteribe’s portrait. The more pronounced features of the Duke of Penthièvre indicate that this portrait also dates from after the one painted by Jean Baptiste Charpentier Le Vieux (1728–1806), of which there are also numerous studio versions (the Musée du Château de Versailles, the Musée de Sceaux, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rennes or Tours, etc.). Having become the Duke’s official painter from 1760 onwards, Jean Baptiste Charpentier produced intimate portraits, but above all the numerous official portraits of the prince, based on a model that varied very little throughout the Duke’s life.

Based on current knowledge, the portrait at Aulteribe appears to be a previously unseen official version of the Duke, very different from Charpentier’s model, both in terms of posture and the rendering of the face and fabrics. The portrait is set within an oval architectural trompe-l’œil frame, itself inserted into a rectangle – a technique more commonly found in engraving than in painting, except in the work of the painter Claude Lefebvre (1632–1675) in the previous century. Guillaume Kientz, formerly curator of historic monuments in Auvergne, believes the painting may be by Carle van Loo, who produced numerous portraits that regularly appear on the art market. There is significant evidence to support this hypothesis, as a portrait of Bacchus in a faux oval, similar to that in our painting, did indeed appear at a Sotheby’s auction in New York in 2010.

The Duke of Penthièvre, grandson of Louis XIV, was the only son of Louis-Alexandre de Bourbon (1678–1737), a legitimised prince and Count of Toulouse (whose portrait by Rigaud’s workshop is also held in the collections of the Château d’Aulteribe), and Marie-Victoire de Noailles. His mother, seeking to win over members of other branches of the House of France, wished to marry her son to a princess of the blood, Louise-Henriette de Bourbon. However, the latter’s mother, the Dowager Princess of Conti, disdaining an alliance with an illegitimate branch, favoured the Duke of Chartres, Louis Philippe d’Orléans (1725–1785). The Countess of Toulouse therefore turned her attention to a princess of lower rank, but whose father was a reigning sovereign and whose mother was an Orléans, Marie-Thérèse de Modène. The Duke of Penthièvre was regarded as one of the wealthiest men in Europe, with an annual income estimated at six million livres, derived from the vast landholdings of the children of the Duke of Maine, the Prince of Dombes (died 1755) and the Count of Eu (died 1775), comprising the châteaux of Sceaux, Anet, Aumale, Dreux and Gisors. Deeply affected by the death of his wife in 1754, that of his only surviving son in 1768, the assassination of his daughter-in-law, the Princess of Lamballe (1792) and by the king’s execution, ordered by his son-in-law the Duke of Orléans (1793), the Duke of Penthièvre spent the remainder of his life in devotion and charity.