François-Hubert Drouais, 'Madame de Pompadour at her Tambour Frame', 1763-4

Madame de Pompadour at her Tambour Frame

François-Hubert Drouais

Central Hall

About the work

Overview

Although the grandest of the many portraits of Madame de Pompadour, this is also the most naturalistic image of her, which avoids the rigid formality or mythological trappings of much court portraiture. The former mistress of Louis XV, Madame de Pompadour had become an international celebrity by the end of her life, when this portrait was painted. However, she is presented here in her apartment at Versailles as an almost matronly figure embodying bourgeois virtue and industry as she works at a tapestry accompanied by one of her dogs.

She was an important patron of the fine, applied and performing arts and a leader of taste in matters of fashion and style, particularly the Rococo style. The objects around her testify to her interest in the arts and literature. Close examination reveals that the portrait is in fact made up of two canvases. A smaller canvas – including the head, shoulders and right forearm – has been incorporated into the larger full-length portrait.

In-depth

Many portraits were painted of Madame de Pompadour (1721–1764), the mistress of Louis XV and one of the most famous figures of her time. Although the grandest, this portrait by Drouais is also the most naturalistic image of her, which avoids the rigid formality or mythological trappings of much court portraiture. Instead, we encounter Madame de Pompadour as a homely woman accompanied by one of her dogs, a black King Charles spaniel, in her salon (a living or drawing room) at her apartment in Versailles as she works at a tapestry (tambour) frame. Rather than the international celebrity she had become by the end of her life, when this portrait was painted, she is presented as an almost matronly figure embodying bourgeois virtue and industry.

Madame de Pompadour was born plain Mademoiselle Poisson. In 1741 she married Charles-Guillaume Le Normant des Etioles, the nephew of her mother’s rich lover. She began to entertain artists and intellectuals at her salon, where she attracted the attention of Louis XV. After separating from her husband, she was ennobled to marquise and moved into Versailles. Although regarded as an upstart Parisian bourgeois by her rivals and enemies, she retained the king’s favour, and continued to live at Versailles even after she had ceased to be his mistress by 1751.

The marquise was an important patron of the fine, applied and performing arts. She particularly supported the artist Boucher and protected the porcelain factory at Vincennes, transferring it to Sèvres, near one of her houses, where it flourished. Visitors to her salon in Paris had included the writer Voltaire, the most famous of the liberal philosophes (intellectuals). She remained sympathetic to Enlightenment thinking and maintained an extensive library. A leader of taste in matters of fashion and style, particularly Rococo style, the marquise also had some influence in government and public affairs, and supported the king’s extensive building projects. She was the subject of numerous biographies, and remains one of the most well-known historical figures of the eighteenth century.

Close examination reveals that the portrait, which was begun in April 1763 but not completed until May 1764 (a month after the marquise’s death aged 43), is in fact made up of two canvases. A smaller canvas – including the head, shoulders and right forearm – has been incorporated into the larger full-length portrait. It was not unusual, particularly with important sitters, for artists to work on a smaller portrait from life and to complete the rest in the studio with a model using the sitter’s clothes and accessories. It is not a court dress with unwieldy wide hoops, but a gown worn over small side hoops with a train gathered behind consisting of an overdress, petticoat and stomacher. The sumptuous fabric is possibly painted silk but is more likely a hand-painted floral pattern chintz garnished with French needle lace. The choice of material was itself a patriotic statement of support for the thriving industry in France of printing on cotton cloth, sourced from the French West Indies, which by the 1760s rivalled England’s production. Patriotic sentiment – and self-interest – may also have prompted the commissioning of the portrait to mark the ending of the Seven Years War (1756–63). Madame de Pompadour had helped promote the Franco-Austrian alliance, which had proved disastrous for France. Drouais’s portrait may have been intended to project an apolitical image of the marquise as a benign and respectable lady of arts and letters in order to downplay her implication in French military defeat and her identity as the king’s former mistress.

To the right in the picture, there is an elaborate worktable (with Sèvres plaques), which has a folio of drawings or engravings and a mandolin resting against it. These objects, and the books in the bookcase, testify to the marquise’s interest in the arts. However, it is the tapestry frame that, with the dress, is the most distinctive object on view. In his memoirs, one courtier later noted that in 1756 the marquise stopped receiving visitors in her dressing room but instead received them while at her tapestry-frame: ‘she went from make-up to making.’ Embroidery was regarded as a virtuous activity for women and it was not uncommon for them to be portrayed engaged in it. Most tambour frames were circular – the word comes from the French tambour (drum) – but wider rectangular frames, such as this one, allowed for larger pieces that could be stretched and wound on a roller as the work progressed.

Placing Madame de Pompadour at her tambour holding a hooked needle as she works on her embroidery creates a domesticated, even homely, image of respectability and relative informality. Although no longer a young woman, and stoically enduring deteriorating health, the marquise looks up from her embroidery to calmly acknowledge us with, as one admirer described, her ‘wonderful complexion … and those eyes not so very big, but the brightest, wittiest and most sparkling.’ But the tambour frame also creates a series of horizontals and verticals that provide a solid base supporting the triangle of her upper torso and head, which we see from slightly below. Almost exactly a century later, Ingres was to use a similar elevated pyramidal structure to create a powerful but discreet effect of social status in his portrait of Madame Moitessier, a picture also filled with the display of a luxurious dress and objects.

The portrait was well-received. One commentator who saw it in Paris at the Palais de Tuileries in August 1764 noted: ‘The resemblance is most striking, and the picture’s composition is as opulent as it is well understood.’ For another, Drouais was ‘the only man who knows how to paint women … I am persuaded that all our women will henceforth wish to be painted by Drouais.’

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Key facts

Details

Full title: Madame de Pompadour at her Tambour Frame
Artist: François-Hubert Drouais
Artist dates: 1727 - 1775
Date made: 1763-4
Medium and support: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 217 × 156.8 cm
Inscription summary: Signed; Dated and inscribed
Acquisition credit: Bought, 1977
Inventory number: NG6440
Location: Central Hall
Collection: Main Collection
Frame: 18th-century French Frame

Provenance

Retained by the artist until sold, presumably to the marquis de Marigny, the sitter’s brother, since recorded in 1781 as part of item 1106 in his posthumous inventory in the winter dining room of the hôtel de Menars, place des Victoires, Paris; probably Antoine‐Charles Dulac (1729–1811), sale by him and others, Paillet, Paris, 6 April 1801, lot 147; probably François‐Joseph Le Lièvre, marquis de La Grange et de Fourilles (1726–1808); his posthumous sale, Paillet, Demauroy C.P., Paris, 21 December 1808, lot 3; probably posthumous sale of the marquis de Cypierre, Bonnefons, Paris, 10 March 1845 and following days (lot 45, 1,219 francs to Beurdeley); John Webb; his sale, Christie’s, London, 20 March 1869, lot 69, £845 5s. to Davis on behalf of Baron Meyer Amschel de Rothschild (1818–1874); by 1883 in the billiard room at Mentmore Towers, Buckinghamshire, built for Baron Meyer Amschel in 1852–4; by descent through his daughter Hannah to Neil Archibald, 7th Earl of Rosebery (born 1929); recorded in 1976 hanging on the Grand Staircase of Mentmore Towers; included as lot 2421 of the Mentmore sale, Sotheby Parke Bernet & Co., London, 25 May 1977, but bought by the National Gallery by private treaty six days previously for £385,000 against an open market valuation of £550,000, the painting having been designated by HM Treasury as of pre‐eminent importance.

Additional information

Text extracted from the ‘Provenance’ section of the catalogue entry in Humphrey Wine, ‘National Gallery Catalogues: The Eighteenth Century French Paintings’, London 2018; for further information, see the full catalogue entry.

Exhibition history

2022

Louis XV: Passions of a king

Château de Versailles

18 October 2022 - 19 February 2023

Bibliography

1860

A. Fizelière, 'L'art et les femmes en France. Madame de Pompadour. Appendice', Gazette des beaux-arts, II, 1860, pp. 295-302
1877

M. Tourneaux (ed.), Correspondance littéraire, philosophique et critique par Grimm, Diderot, Raynal etc, Paris 1877
1906

C. Gabillot, 'Les trois Drouais', Gazette des beaux-arts, XXXV, 1906, pp. 155-74
1906

F. Villars, 'Les trois Drouais', Revue universelle des arts, X, 1906, pp. 301-14
1939

A. Leroy, 'The Portraits of Mme. de Pompadour', The Connoisseur, CIII, 1939
1958

Y. Deslandres, 'Le vrai visage de Madame de Pompadour', Jardin des arts, 45, 1958, pp. 572-80
1967

P. Verlet, French Furniture and Interior Decoration of the Eighteenth Century, London 1967
1974

S. Eriksen, Early Neo-Classicism in France: The Creation of the Louis Seize Style in Architectural Decoration, Furniture and Ormolu, Gold and Silver, and Sevres Porcelain in the Mid-eighteenth Century, London 1974
1977

A. Jackson (ed.), Art at Auction: The Year at Sotheby Parke Bernet 1976-77, London 1977
1978

The National Gallery, The National Gallery: July 1975 - December 1977, London 1978
1978

J.J. Luna, 'Adiciones al estudio de François-Hubert Drouais', Archivo español de arte, LI/201-204, 1978, pp. 275-86
1978

J. Mills and R. White, 'Organic Analysis in the Arts: Some Further Paint Medium Analyses', National Gallery Technical Bulletin, II, 1978, pp. 71-6
1980

National Gallery, 'Pictures Cleaned and Restored in the Conservation Department of the National Gallery, March 1980 - December 1980', National Gallery Technical Bulletin, V, 1981
1981

P. Conisbee, Painting in Eighteenth Century France, Oxford 1981
1983

B. Scott, 'Portraits of Madame de Pompadour', The Antique Dealer and Collectors Guide, 1983, pp. 48-51
1984

D. Wakefield, French Eighteenth Century Painting, London 1984
1985

M. Wilson, French Paintings before 1800, London 1985
1988

J. Bryant, Mrs Howard: A Woman of Reason, London 1988
1988

C. Arminjon, Madame de Pompadour et la floraison des arts (exh. cat. Musée David M. Stewart, 1988), Montréal 1988
1991

B. Rupprecht, 'Bouchers Pompadour-Porträt von 1756', in K. Moseneder and A. Praters (eds), Aufsätze zur Kunstgeschichte: Festschrift für Hermann Bauer zum 60. Geburtstag, Hildesheim 1991, pp. 492-7
1992

M. Levey, Painting and Sculpture in France 1700-1789, New Haven 1992
1992

J. Whitehead, The French Interior in the Eighteenth Century, London 1992
1995

T. Crow, Emulation: Making Artists for Revolutionary France, New Haven 1995
1995

A. Ribeiro, The Art of Dress: Fashion in England and France 1750-1820, New Haven 1995
1995

T. Bajou, 'Le Portrait de la marquise de Pompadour (vers 1760), un nouveau Carle van Loo à Versailles', Revue du Louvre, XLIII/1, 1995, pp. 36-45
1996

P. Hughes, The Wallace Collection: Catalogue of Furniture, London 1996
1996

S. Seufert, 'Madame de Pompadour zwischen Koketterie und Frömmigkeit', Kritische Berichte, XXIV/4, 1996, pp. 84-92
1996

H. Wine, 'Les peintres de l'Académie et leurs familles', Dix-huitième siècle, 28, 1996, pp. 483-522
2000

E. Goodman, The Portraits of Madame de Pompadour: Celebrating the Femme Savante, Berkeley 2000
2000

M. Hyde, 'The "Makeup" of the Marquise: Boucher's Portrait of Pompadour at Her Toilette', Art Bulletin, LXXXII/3, 2000, pp. 453-75
2001

C. Baker and T. Henry, The National Gallery: Complete Illustrated Catalogue, London 2001
2002

A.R. Gordon, 'The Picture Within the Picture: Boucher's 1750 "Portrait of Madame de Pompadour" Identified', Apollo, CLV/480, 2002, pp. 21-30
2002

C. Jones, Madame de Pompadour: Images of a Mistress (exh. cat. The National Gallery, 16 October 2002 - 12 January 2003), London 2002
2002

X. Salmon, Madame de Pompadour et les arts (exh. cat. The National Gallery, 20 June - 16 September 2001), Paris 2002
2002

X. Salmon and J.G. von Hohenzollern, Madame de Pompadour: L'art et l'amour, Munich 2002
2004

A. Jackson and A. Jaffers, Encounters: The Meeting of Asia and Europe, 1500-1800, (exh. cat. Victoria and Albert Museum, 23 September - 5 December 2004), London 2004
2005

L.E. Miller, 'The Marriage of Art and Commerce: Philippe de Lasalle's Success in Silk', Art History, XXVIII/2, 2005, pp. 200-26
2005

M.D. Sheriff, 'Decorating Knowledge: The Ornamental Book, the Philosophic Image and the Naked Truth', Art History, XXVIII/2, 2005, pp. 151-73
2006

T. Crow, Emulation: David, Drouais, and Girodet in the Art of Revolutionary France, New Haven 2006
2006

A.R. Gordon, 'The Dispersal of the Estate of Madame de Pompadour: New Documentary Evidence', The Burlington Magazine, CXLVIII/1238, 2006, pp. 312-24
2018

Wine, Humphrey, National Gallery Catalogues: The Eighteenth Century French Paintings, London 2018

Frame

This is a French Louis XV ‘pastel frame’. Water-gilded and made of oak, the top edge features bundled reeding with a leaf design, known as ‘Philippe d’Orléans’ carving. The back edge is adorned with a cabochon motif. A wide reverse ogee section transitions into a narrow, astragal moulding, leading to a hollow and culminating at the sight edge with a finely carved French acanthus-leaf motif.

During the reign of Louis XV, pastel portraits gained immense popularity in Paris, leading to the creation of a distinctive style of frame specifically designed for works on paper, known as the ‘pastel frame’. This particular frame, unusual for its large size, is a rare find. Acquired in 2009, the frame was fitted to Drouais’ Madame de Pompadour at her Tambour Frame.

About this record

If you know more about this painting or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.

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