Lot 2166 Dα

Franz Xaver Winterhalter - there was hardly another portrait painter of the 19th century as influential as the German artist from the tranquil Black Forest region. Like perhaps only that of Thomas Lawrence before him, his career being an artistic event of pan-European dimensions. His portraits of Elisabeth of Austria-Hungary ("Sisi", ill. 1) or Queen Victoria, whom he painted many times, have shaped their image as young monarchs to this day. Queen Victoria was convinced at Winterhalter's death that posterity would one day equate his works with those of Anthony van Dyck.
Franz Xaver Winterhalter's career as a portrait painter of the European aristocracy was straightforward and rapid. His training at the academy in Karlsruhe (1819) was followed by enrolment at the Munich Art Academy and entry into Josef Stieler's studio. In 1834 he was appointed court painter to the Grand Duke of Baden, but by the end of the year he had already moved to Paris - at that time he was barely 30 years old. He was soon painting the monarchs, princes and rulers of Europe: King Louis Philippe of France, Leopold I, King of the Belgians, Queen Victoria, later Emperor Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie, as well as members of the high nobility from France, Germany, England and Russia. Queen Victoria and the English royal family are among his most important clients. Winterhalter commuted at times between the metropolises of Paris, London and Brussels, with detours to Baden-Baden and other European cities. During the months he spent in England, he took up residence at Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle.

When Winterhalter painted the portrait of the young Gabrielle de Lagrené in 1853, he was at the height of his creative powers. After Napoléon III's self-proclamation as Emperor of the French the year before, he was commissioned to paint his official state portrait (fig. 2), and a year later he was appointed imperial court painter - making him one of the leading artists of Second Empire Paris. The oval portrait of Gabrielle de Lagrené is an exemplary commission of the kind Winterhalter carried out for the French nobility, who sought to have their own daughters portrayed like the style-defining monarchs and princesses of the time. Gabrielle was the eldest daughter of Théodose, Comte de Lagrené, a high-ranking French diplomat and Pair de France, and Marie Varinska de Doubinski (Doubenskaïa), lady-in-waiting to the Russian Tsarina. Lagrené was stationed, among other places, in St Petersburg, Darmstadt and Beijing, where he negotiated the Treaty of Huangpu with China in 1844. Gabrielle was born in Darmstadt in 1835, so she was 18 years old when the portrait was painted, and this was probably the reason for its commission. The portrait unites all the qualities of Winterhalter's portraits of women for which he was so highly esteemed: the balance between idealisation and individuality in the rendering of the face; the elegance of the figure's composition within the oval surround; the tactile quality in the depiction of the precious fabrics, especially the sumptuous organza shawl; and not least the fluid enamel-like rendering of the skin of the face and the soft dark hair that frames it.

Abb. 1/Ill. 1: Franz Xaver Winterhalter, Portrait Elisabeth von Österreich-Ungarn / Elisabeth of Austria-Hungary, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien/Vienna © bpk / DeAgostini / New Picture Library / G. Nimatallah
Abb. 2/ill. 2: Nach/After Franz Xaver Winterhalter, Portrait Napoléon III, Châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon, Versailles © bpk / RMN - Grand Palais / Gérard Blot