Lot no. 151
Louise BOUTEILLER (1783-1828) Portrait of a man in a brown jacket and white scarf. Oil on canvas, original Belot canvas, signed on the left. 62 x 51 cm Stuccoed and gilded wooden frame with palmettes.Little known and little studied until 2016, Louise Bouteiller returned to the limelight with the reappearance that year of a masterpiece, the Portrait of Césarine d'Houdetot, Baronne De Barante, reading Paul et Virginie (1818) acquired by the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne the following year.The daughter of a wealthy planter in Saint-Domingue, Louise learned to paint from Pierre Bouillon, himself a pupil of David. The paintings she exhibited at the Salons from 1810 to 1827 were initially historical troubadour subjects, followed by portraits, including one of Louis XVIII in 1817. A committed royalist, she was familiar with the Court. In 1824, she was appointed director of painting and drawing for the young girls of the Legion of Honour at the Maison de Saint-Denis. Some of her paintings are held in French museums. When Prosper de Barante divided up the commissions for the portraits of the Vendée generals between various artists, he took care to ask our painter for one, and he painted Louis de Frotté (Salon of 1822, Cholet museum). His works bear witness to the social recognition that women artists achieved between the end of the 18th century and the first third of the 19th century, as recently described by Severine Sofio in her essay "La parenthèse enchantée" (2015).Until now, our painting has been identified as Jean-Antoine Claude, comte Chaptal de Chanteloup.
