The Baron de Besenval in his Salon:
Catalogue entry

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About the catalogue

Full title: The Baron de Besenval in his Salon
Artist: Henri-Pierre Danloux
Inventory number: NG6598
Author: Humphrey Wine
Extracted from: The Eighteenth Century French Paintings (London, 2018)

Henri‐Pierre Danloux 1753–1809
NG 6598
The Baron de Besenval in his Salon

Humphrey Wine, 2018

Extracted from:

Humphrey Wine, The Eighteenth Century French Paintings (London: National Gallery Company and Yale University Press, 2018).
Humphrey Wine and Virginia Napoleone, Former Owners of the Eighteenth‐Century French Paintings in the National Gallery: Appendix to ‘The National Gallery Catalogues: The Eighteenth‐Century French Paintings’ (London: National Gallery Company, 2018).

1791

Oil on canvas, 45.5 × 36.3 cm

Inscribed in cartouche of picture frame in the centre of wall behind sitter: TE[niers] [?]

Provenance

By inheritance from the sitter’s estate to Joseph‐Alexandre, vicomte de Ségur (1756–1805) (said to be Besenval’s natural son by the marquise de Ségur);¹ presumably selected as part of his legacy entitlement by Jean‐Baptiste‐Denis Després (1752–1832), Besenval’s secretary and friend, by whom in turn presumably given to Charles‐Louis, 3rd marquis de Chériséy (1751–1827) and then by inheritance to his youngest child, François‐Louis‐Victor, comte de Chériséy (1793–1878);² Gérard‐Louis Charles, comte de Chériséy (1823–1909)³ at the château de Crécy, where seen in 1901 and in 1906;⁴ his sale, Lair‐Dubreuil et Haro, Paris, 16 June 1909, lot 4, sold for 27,000 francs to Prince François de Broglie (1851–1939);⁵ with François de Broglie until 1930, then in the collection of Princess Amédée de Broglie, née Béatrix de Faucigny‐Lucinge (1902–1990), Paris, until at least 1977;⁶ with Stair Sainty Matthiessen, New York, 1984, from whom bought by Henry Kravis, New York on 20 May 1986; sold Sotheby’s, New York, 27 May 2004, lot 35, for $2,472,000 including buyer’s premium; bought by the National Gallery for £1,600,434.63 from Daniel Katz Ltd and Simon Dickinson Ltd, 2004.

**Fig. 1**
Henri‐Pierre Danloux, *Study for the Portrait of the baron de Besenval*, 1791. Black chalk on paper. Whereabouts unknown. © The National Gallery, London

**Fig. 2**
Henri‐Pierre Danloux, *Bust‐length Study of the baron de Besenval*, 1791. Charcoal on paper, 28.5 × 25 cm. Feldbrunnen, Museum Scholss Waldegg. FELDBRUNNEN Museum Schloss Waldegg © Schloss Waldegg

Exhibitions

Paris 1967; New York 1980–1 (34); New York 1986 (17); New York 1989 (8); Ottawa, Washington and Berlin 2003–4 (105).⁷

Related Works

(1) A black chalk full‐length study on paper for the portrait (location unknown), recorded in a Paris private collection (fig. 1).⁸
(2) A drawing by Danloux of the head and shoulders of Besenval in profile, close to the likeness in NG 6598 but with a more severe expression, his jacket buttoned up and wearing the cross of the Order of Saint Louis, was acquired from princesse de Broglie in 1989 by the Museum Schloss Waldegg, Feldbrunnen (fig. 2). A similar drawing, recorded in the De Vallière collection in 1940 and then in the Berthoud collection, Neuchâtel is said to be inscribed: ‘Pierre‐Victor Baron de Bezenval Mort en Juin 1791 âgé de 70 ans Dessin de Danloux d’après l’original fait par lui même pour Mr de Bezenval’.⁹
(3) An engraving by Jean‐Baptiste‐Michel Dupréel, probably after Related Work (2), illustrating the edition of Besenval’s memoirs published in 1805–7 by the vicomte de Ségur.¹⁰
(4) An engraving after NG 6598 by Marie‐François Dien in the same direction as the original.¹¹
(5) A painted(?) portrait of Besenval by (?)Danloux, possibly related to NG 6598, in the possession of Louise‐Adelaïde, Mme de Pusigneux, in 1792.¹²

Technical Notes

The overall condition is very good except for an irregular [page 119][page 120] entire loss in the area of the proper right sleeve about 6 cm wide and 3.5 cm high (both maximum dimensions). The support is a plain weave canvas cusped all round. It was possibly lined in the nineteenth century, since the stretcher is of that period. The painting was last restored prior to its acquisition by the National Gallery, probably during the second half of the twentieth century. The ground colour is a warm beige‐grey. The X‐radiographs reveal no alterations.

The stretcher is labelled as follows:

(1) A printed, partially destroyed nineteenth‐century label: ‘…on distingue / …es menus bibelo[ts] [?] … [l] [?]a pièce, le mur décoré de tableaux. / … sur la cheminée, se réfletant dans la / grande glace, e[t] [?] divers objets posés sur une co[mmode] [?] … derrière s[on] [?] / fauteuil. / Toile. Haut., … 6 cent; lar[ge] [?] … cent.’
(2) A small octagonal label with a printed blue border bearing illegible manuscript.
(3) An illegible word in pencil.
(4) In ink: ‘720’.
(5) On modern masking tape in pencil: ‘84A’.
(6) A bar code label connected with the May 2004 auction sale (see under Provenance).

The backboard and frame bear labels connected with the exhibition in 2003–4 (see under Exhibitions) and with the May 2004 auction.

Frame

The frame, which may be original, is French Louis XVI neoclassical giltwood, with applied ornament of cross‐cut acanthus in the hollow, pearls, and rais‐de‐coeur at the sight edge.

Summary Biography of the Sitter

Pierre‐Joseph‐Victor de Besenval, soldier, collector, bon viveur, raconteur and rake, lived in part of what is now the Swiss embassy in the rue de Grenelle, Paris. He fought courageously in numerous campaigns as an officer in France’s Swiss Guards and just before the Revolution was their commander‐in‐chief. That, and membership of the hated circle close to Marie‐Antoinette, prompted his flight to his native Switzerland soon after the fall of the Bastille, but he was arrested on the way. His life was saved thanks to good fortune and a good lawyer. Released from prison early in 1790, he died the following year at home, surrounded by his collections and after hosting a dinner for his friends.

Early Life and Military Career to 1789

Usually called Pierre‐Victor, Pierre‐Joseph‐Victor, baron de Besenval, was born on 14 October 1721 in Schloss Waldegg near Solothurn in Switzerland.¹³ His father was Jean‐Victor‐Pierre II de Besenval, France’s Ambassadeur Extraordinaire at the Polish court from 1713, later appointed Lieutenant Général des Armées du Roy (1719) and a colonel in the Swiss Guards (1722).¹⁴ In 1726 he was created baron de Brunstatt.¹⁵ It was in Warsaw in 1718 that Jean‐Victor married Besenval’s mother, the Countess Katherina Bielinska.¹⁶ She was a cousin of King Stanislas of Poland and was thus of sufficient rank to attend the marriage of Stanislas’s daughter, Marie Leszczyńska, to Louis XV of France in 1725. She also held a fashionable salon in Paris, where on more than one occasion she played host to Jean‐Jacques Rousseau.¹⁷

**Fig. 3**
Alexis‐Simon Belle, *Portrait of Pierre‐Joseph‐Victor Besenval aged 12*, 1734. Oil on canvas, 190 × 125.5 cm. Feldbrunnen, Museum Schloss Waldegg. FELDBRUNNEN Museum Schloss Waldegg © Schloss Waldegg

When his parents went to Paris the infant Pierre‐Victor was left behind at Waldegg; it was only when he was a little over four years old¹⁸ that he joined them and his older sister, Théodora‐Elisabeth‐Catherine, who would marry Charles‐Louis‐Guillaume, marquis de Broglie in 1733.¹⁹ Pierre‐Victor’s time at home was quite short. Aged nine he became a cadet in the Swiss Guards in a battalion stationed in Paris, and two years later he was made an ensign.²⁰ In this capacity he served in Germany during the War of the Polish Succession, which was in a sense a family affair, since its purpose was to reinstate his mother’s cousin Stanislas to the Polish throne. It was shortly before this posting that Alexis‐Simon Belle painted the young Besenval in his standard‐bearer’s uniform (fig. 3).²¹ Soon after that, following the death of his father, the 15‐year‐old Besenval became financially independent. His wealth was ensured by further inheritance from his mother when he was aged 40,²² and by various government pensions and awards as his military career progressed.²³

Opportunity, connections, bravery and luck ensured [page 121]Besenval’s survival and his promotion through the ranks. He was made a captain at the age of 17. Four years later he was appointed aide‐de‐camp to Marshal Victor‐François de Broglie, to whom he was related by marriage.²⁴ He served at a number of sieges and battles during the War of the Austrian Succession, including those of Sahay (1742), where his bravery was recognised when he was made a chevalier de l’Ordre royal et militaire de Saint Louis in March 1744,²⁵ Fontenoy (1745) and Rocoux (1746). In 1744 Nattier painted a portrait of Besenval en guerrier, invested with the Order of Saint Louis, of which the prime version was shown at the 1746 Salon (no. 69) (a copy in St Petersburg, Hermitage Museum).²⁶ In March 1747, aged 26, he was promoted to the rank of brigadier, in which capacity he participated in the victory at Lawfeld (1747). During the Seven Years War (1756–63) he acted as brigadier‐general and aide‐de‐camp to the duc d’Orléans at the victory of Hastenbeck (1757). The following year saw Besenval appointed a field marshal, but great sorrow for the family when his only nephew, Achille‐Joseph de Broglie, was killed at the battle of Crévelt.²⁷ In 1759, the year of a portrait by Carmontelle (fig. 4),²⁸ he served at Minden and then at Clostercamp (1760) and elsewhere in Germany.

Early in 1761, thanks to the courage he had shown at the battle of Clostercamp, Besenval was promoted to the rank of Commander (supernumerary) of the Order of Saint Louis.²⁹ His bravery was matched by good fortune: he constantly emerged unscathed from the bloodiest battles.³⁰ This was in marked contrast to the fate of his friend and inseparable companion‐in‐arms Philippe‐Henri, marquis de Ségur, who was seriously wounded at Rocoux (1746); lost an arm at Lawfeld (1747); and was again seriously wounded, and this time captured, at the battle of Clostercamp (1760), where Besenval’s only loss was his horse, which was shot from under him. Besenval’s final campaign, again in the company of Ségur, was in 1762 in Germany, where at Amoeneburg his troops were virtually destroyed by enemy fire but once more he emerged unscathed.³¹

With the coming of peace in 1763 Besenval was appointed Inspecteur‐Général des Suisses et Grisons, in which capacity he reorganised the regiments of Swiss Guards, supervised their recruitment and chose new uniforms. His reforms were rewarded by Louis XV on 1 January 1766 with the Grand Cross of the Order of Saint Louis, an annual pension of 6,000 livres and the governorship of the fortress of Haguenau in the Lower Rhine.³² In 1767 he was made lieutenant colonel of the Swiss Guards.³³ Ten years later he was made inspector general of troops in the Languedoc, and then given the same post in Brittany and Normandy during the preparations for the American expedition.³⁴ The final step in his military career was on 24 September 1781, when, thanks to his friend the marquis de Ségur, who was by now the Minister for War, Besenval was appointed as commander‐in‐chief of all French troops of the interior save Paris. This entitled him to a salary of 28,848 livres in addition to the pensions and perquisites he already enjoyed.³⁵ Ségur was doubtless returning a favour, since Besenval claimed to have helped in manoeuvring his friend’s appointment to the War Ministry in 1781.³⁶ By this time Besenval was seen as having significant influence in the military administration of France. According to the marquis de Bombelles, if one wished to do business with Ségur, one had first to address Besenval.³⁷ In his memoirs Besenval revealed his modus operandi where court appointments were concerned: It’s an infallible means of success to leave the glory and the hope of profit to those who most desire them. One always attains the goal, when one has the art of exciting the interest of officials accomplished in intrigue whom one uses; and in that case appearing to be unconcerned in the matter is the most effective behaviour that one can retain.³⁸

**Fig. 4**
Louis Carrogis, called Carmontelle, *The baron de Besenval*, 1759. Watercolour, gouache, pencil and red chalk on paper, 27 × 14 cm. Chantilly, Musée Condé. CHANTILLY Musée Condé © RMN‐Grand Palais (domaine de Chantilly) / René‐Gabriel Ojéda

[page 122]

**Fig. 5**
Louis Carrogis, called Carmontelle, *Portrait of Louise‐Anne‐Madeleine de Vernon, marquise de Ségur*, 1763. Black and red chalk, Indian ink, grey wash highlights, white gouache and watercolour on cream paper, 28.5 × 16.3 cm. Versailles, Musée national des châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon. VERSAILLES Musée national des châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon © RMN‐Grand Palais (Château de Versailles) / Franck Raux

Dalliances, Alliances and Intrigues

Besenval’s adventures were not confined to campaigning. He had a liaison in Flanders with the actress Claire‐Josèphe‐Hippolyte Léris de Latude, better known as Mlle Clairon, while they were scarcely more than adolescents.³⁹ In an undated letter addressed to him in Lille, and after she had enjoyed several other relationships, she wrote: ‘J’ai plus de plaisir, maintenant, à t’être fidèle, sans même que tu le désires, que j’en avais autrefois à te faire une infidelité.’⁴⁰ Ultimately Clairon became disillusioned with her soldier lover, dubbing him ‘Baise‐cul’.⁴¹

For a period, probably between the end of the War of the Austrian Succession in 1748 and the start of the Seven Years War in 1756, Besenval, together with Louis‐Philippe, duc d’Orléans, and the comte de Frise, kept a little house in the rue Cadet in the Faubourg Montmartre for their amorous adventures.⁴² Possibly this arrangement ceased with the death of the comte de Frise in 1754. At all events it was soon after that event that Besenval entered into the first of his two long‐term relationships. This was with Louise‐Anne‐Madeleine de Vernon de Beauval (fig. 5), a sugar plantation heiress whom he first met in 1749, when she married his best friend and companion‐in‐arms, Philippe‐Henri, marquis de Ségur.⁴³ Anne‐Madeleine and Besenval must have been lovers by 1755, since he was notoriously the father of her second son, Joseph‐Alexandre de Ségur, born in April 1756, who would become Besenval’s principal legatee (fig. 6).⁴⁴ The public acknowledgement of the relationship between Besenval and Joseph‐Alexandre must have been underlined by the exhibition of their respective busts by Claude‐André Deseine, probably next to each other, at the 1782 Salon de la Correspondance.⁴⁵ The bust of Besenval was in plaster; there exists a signed and dated version in terracotta in a private collection (fig. 7).

Despite Besenval’s relationship with the marquise, he and Ségur remained close friends. Besides promoting each [page 123] others’ careers, Besenval was a frequent visitor to Ségur’s country house at Romainville to the north‐east of Paris.⁴⁶ In May 1789, some years after the death of the marquise, an American visitor to Romainville, Gouverneur Morris, soon to become one of Besenval’s frequent visitors, noted: In the Garden I remark an Obelisk dedicated to Friendship. It is executed by the Baron de Bezenwald (I suppose) who was most intimately the Friend of Madame de Ségur as well as of the Maréchal. She, with an unusual Degree of Candor, avowed her Passion to her Husband and all three lived very happily together until her Death.⁴⁷

**Fig. 6**
Louis Carrogis, called Carmontelle, *Philippe‐Angélique de Froissy, comtesse de Ségur, and her grandson Joseph‐Alexandre, vicomte de Ségur, nicknamed ‘the little chap’*, about 1763. Black and red chalks, Indian ink grey wash highlights and watercolour on cream paper, 26.6 × 16.9 cm. Versailles, Musée national des châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon. VERSAILLES Musée national des châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon © RMN‐Grand Palais (Château de Versailles) / Daniel Arnaudet / Jean Schormans

**Fig. 7**
Claude‐André Deseine, *Pierre‐Victor de Besenval at the age of 61*, 1782. Terracotta, H. 68 cm including base. Private collection, Switzerland. PRIVATE COLLECTIONS © Courtesy of the owners

**Fig. 8**
Henri‐Pierre Danloux, *The marquise de La Suze*, 1792. Pastel, 19 × 15.2 cm. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, The Forsyth Wickes Collection. BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS Museum of Fine Arts © 2018 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

The obelisk cannot be identified from the plans, elevations or views of the château de Romainville published in 1781 by Le Rouge, nor in the snuffbox with views of the chateau made in 1782, so it may have been installed between the latter date and 1789, when Morris wrote of his visit. That Besenval might have designed such a structure is perfectly possible, given that the designs at Romainville of the Chinese and octagonal pavilions and a temple à la Romaine, all built by 1781, were attributed to him.⁴⁸

The spirit of reciprocity between the Ségurs and Besenval found another outlet: when the marquise died in 1778 she bequeathed to Besenval two floral still‐life paintings by Jan Breughel, probably the pictures sold by Joseph‐Alexandre de Ségur after Besenval’s death.⁴⁹ In turn Besenval bequeathed to the marquis, by his will of 1784, a life interest in his Paris hôtel and his possessions there.⁵⁰ In his Mémoires, published posthumously by Joseph‐Alexandre de Ségur, Besenval recounted that he had been told a story of two officer friends who fell for the same girl. She was unwilling to reject either and, pressed by her father to choose one as a husband when she became pregnant, she said she loved both equally. The officers drew lots: one would marry her and the other would remain her lover without the husband ever complaining. The agreement resulted in happiness for all three. When some years later the husband died, the lover married the widow. They had a long life together, despite their inconsolable sadness at the loss of their friend.⁵¹ How much of this story relates to Besenval’s life will never be known.

Another example of the Ségurs’s tolerance towards Besenval lies in the fact that another of the marquise de Ségur’s legatees was Catherine‐Louise, marquise de La Suze (fig. 8).⁵² She and the marquise de Ségur had become friends in 1775, when as 18‐year‐old Catherine‐Louise de Santo Domingo she married Louis‐François Chamillart, marquis de Courcelles et de La Suze, in Paris. Besenval was then 54 and soon became Catherine‐Louise’s lover. They seem to have remained close until Besenval’s death.⁵³ According to a text published in 1790, Besenval left a widow, Marie‐Jeanne‐Anne Yoc de Sury, then aged 66, who was awarded an annual pension of 2,000 livres by the French War Ministry in consideration of the distinguished and useful service rendered by her husband.⁵⁴ However, there is no other mention of this marriage and, since Besenval did not die until the following year, it is likely that the author of the 1790 text was confusing Besenval with someone else.

Besenval had numerous connections at court, among them the duc de Choiseul, who was from 1761 until 1770 France’s Minister of War and colonel‐general of the Swiss Guards (1762–71). He had been among the initiators of the Franco‐Austrian alliance and had promoted the marriage in 1770 of the future Louis XVI with Marie‐Antoinette. Besenval continued his visits to Choiseul’s chateau at Chanteloup even after the latter’s fall from grace and exile in December 1771.⁵⁵ A new avenue in Besenval’s court [page 124]connections was opened with the appointment in 1771 as colonel‐general of the Swiss Guards of the comte d’Artois, the king’s younger brother,⁵⁶ in succession to Choiseul. It was through Artois that Besenval gained entry into the society of Marie‐Antoinette.⁵⁷ Within a year of her becoming queen in 1774 she was expressing great confidence in him,⁵⁸ such that one contemporary later characterised Besenval as having a fatal influence that would be one of the main reasons for her downfall.⁵⁹ Besides having confidence in Besenval, Marie‐Antoinette confided in him, not the least the fact apparently that during the first five years of her marriage to the king he had not consummated it.⁶⁰ This indiscretion, which soon became the subject of gossip at the court,⁶¹ sufficiently alarmed the empress Maria Theresa that she reprimanded her daughter, who in turn had cooled the relationship between herself and the baron by early 1776.⁶² She no longer confided in him, and he contented himself with speaking to her only on matters that she raised. On that basis he remained well treated by Marie‐Antoinette.⁶³ He also remained part of her intimate circle, which included the fabulously wealthy comte de Vaudreuil⁶⁴ and his mistress, Yolande de Polastron, duchesse de Polignac,⁶⁵ who was the queen’s closest friend and governess of her children. In his journal the marquis de Bombelles⁶⁶ records an evening in 1788 at the home of Yolande, when the queen played backgammon with Besenval;⁶⁷ and when Marie‐Antoinette contracted measles in April 1779 Besenval was one of the four senior courtiers appointed as gardes‐malades.⁶⁸ According to one diplomat, the comte de Saint‐Priest, it was Besenval and Vaudreuil who encouraged Marie‐Antoinette’s probable affair with the Swedish count Axel von Fersen.⁶⁹ Besenval’s participation in this tight coterie around the queen, to which many in France were virulently hostile,⁷⁰ was to put his life at risk in the days and months following the fall of the Bastille.

Part of Besenval’s attraction was that he was witty and good company. According to the baronne d’Oberkirch, Besenval ‘has no formal education and has never wanted one; however he is refined, he is a diplomat, he sees things better than anyone and is a very good story teller’.⁷¹ She opined that his credit with the queen was justified by ‘a wit and a natural charm that make [him] stand out’.⁷² Apparently when in November 1789 he was being transferred from prison in Brie‐Comte‐Robert to the Châtelet in Paris, he was so liked by his guards that each in turn requested his embrace.⁷³ However, he was not universally admired. The comte d’Allonville said that one could not have less manners, nor more congeniality;⁷⁴ the comte de Saint‐Priest was less charitable, calling Besenval ‘vieux petit‐maître et homme à bonnes fortunes’ (an old dandy and chancer).⁷⁵ Assessments of Besenval can be found in many of the memoirs published in the nineteenth century by survivors of the Ancien Régime. According to his younger contemporary Gaston de Lévis, another military man and a maréchal de France, Besenval combined the bravery which has always characterised his nation with the fire and dash which seems to belong to ours; he was a fine figure of a man, and had an agreeable face, intelligence, [and] boldness: what more is necessary to succeed? In addition he had much success with women. However, his manners with them were too free, and his gallantry was in poor taste; even among men his conversation was more cynical than sharp, and his joviality more mocking than light hearted.⁷⁶ Besenval’s manner with women, or at least one of them, is suggested by an impromptu ditty which he is said to have written to a woman of the court who, he alleged, affected scornfully to forget her earlier generosity to him:
To see this stern mood
And this false air of virtue,
One would believe in truth, my dear,
That it was you who had fucked me.⁷⁷ Besenval, who was familiar with the world of letters both from his mother’s salon and from his friendship with authors,⁷⁸ wrote a number of novels, none for the public, the first being Les amants soldats written in 1757–8 while he was serving near Wesel.⁷⁹ Some of his fiction, all written during his military campaigning, was published posthumously by his son in 1806. Besenval was a cynic. In his second novel, Spleen, he wrote that filial piety, said to be a virtue, owes its origin to nothing other than avarice, to the paternal wealth that one expects to inherit. That, he wrote, was the true foundation of the despotism of fathers and the submission of children.⁸⁰ Elsewhere in the same story his narrator tells of ‘the persecution which the unfortunate farmers on my own property endure in the collection of taxes to which the necessities and extravagances of the State have condemned them’. Besenval’s narrator goes on to describe how he lent them money to pay the taxes, with repayment to take place after a good harvest, and then with disillusion how the peasants later resented being asked to repay.⁸¹

In his Mémoires Besenval talks of the clergy as an infinitely dangerous body which combines all the disadvantages of a multitude united by the same interest with that of a power founded on credulity and fanaticism.⁸²

One might suppose from such anti‐clericalism on the part of Besenval, and his alter ego’s talk about state extravagance and the use of timely credits to maintain agricultural production, that Besenval was broadly sympathetic to the Philosophes. However, this did not extend at all to Rousseauist ideas and he condemned Beaumarchais’s Marriage of Figaro, which he had seen played in 1784 at the comte de Vaudreuil’s private theatre, as a virulent satire against the established order. He exchanged bitter notes with the author.⁸³ Almost alone of his circle he tried to persuade Louis XVI to have the play banned.⁸⁴ Of the Philosophes he said that pride was the foundation of their character, and egoism their fundamental maxim; that they preached equality to level down everything that was above them; and that in the end they managed to do through their writings what in the days of ignorance one used to do by conspiracy, poison and steel. Royalty, he said, [page 125]went to sleep above it all; the Church hurled poorly aimed thunderbolts; the parlement burned a book to multiply it; the future, he said, was threatened with the dreadful effects of this insouciance, which would be the germ of great misfortunes.⁸⁵

Besenval and the French Revolution

As it turned out, the last of these was true not least for Besenval himself. It was only because of an accident to the comte d’Affry,⁸⁶ the colonel in charge of the Swiss Guards in Paris itself, that in April 1789 Besenval was obliged to replace him. He consequently found himself on the eve of the Revolution under the command of the duc de Broglie and in charge of the three regiments of Swiss troops in Paris in April 1789, in addition to his existing responsibilities.⁸⁷ In the days before the fall of the Bastille his orders from de Broglie were to avoid bloodshed and to concentrate on defending certain key buildings, including the Bastille, against rising disorder.⁸⁸ However, in the absence of sufficient reliable troops, with only three poor cannon manned by invalids, and without affirmative orders from de Broglie to confront the insurrectionists, by now in their thousands, rather than risk a civil war Besenval watched helplessly as rioters pillaged arms from Les Invalides. He withdrew from the city, apparently having had little effective choice.⁸⁹ ‘[His] fundamental dilemma [was that] the population was determined to resist, and he had been ordered to avoid bloodshed. Once open conflict developed, his reluctance to trust his army to fight was probably wise.’⁹⁰ Besenval did, however, send a small detachment of Swiss Guards to help defend the Bastille, and wrote to its Governor, de Launay, on 14 July 1789: ‘M.de Launay will hold on to the last extremity. I have sent him sufficient forces.’⁹¹ He later wrote that de Launay’s lack of foresight was among the reasons that, as he put it, the stronghold had been surrendered to lawyers.⁹² After the fall of the Bastille Besenval went to Versailles and resigned his command. According to his Mémoires, it was at the insistence of the king, in the light of rumours of Besenval’s impending arrest or assassination, that by 19 July⁹³ he headed for his native Switzerland disguised as a member of the Maréchaussée.⁹⁴ It was, he said, the first time that he had allowed himself to be led because of the fears of others.⁹⁵

Arrested en route on 27 July,⁹⁶ he was to be returned to Paris charged with the crime of lèse‐nation (harming the nation), based on his alleged ultimate responsibility for the deaths of citizens who stormed the Bastille; failure to act against brigandage; and failing to keep promises made to citizens to arm them. However, fortunate once again, Besenval found himself on the same road as his Swiss compatriot the hugely popular Necker, who was returning to Paris to take up the premiership after his recall by Louis XVI. It was Necker who intervened on 30 July with a plea for Besenval’s freedom in a speech at the Hôtel de Ville,⁹⁷ an irony since ‘no one was less sympathetic and less capable of understanding Necker’s reforms’.⁹⁸ The Paris Commune ordered Besenval to be released, but this was countermanded by the National Assembly on the urging of Mirabeau, among others.⁹⁹ Necker’s intervention at least had the result that Besenval was imprisoned not in Paris, where he would most likely have been lynched¹⁰⁰ (if for no more than his close association with the circle around Marie‐Antoinette)¹⁰¹ but at Brie‐Comte‐Robert, some 15 miles to the south‐east.¹⁰² By November 1789, when Besenval was returned to Paris to be imprisoned at the Châtelet, he had already been pronounced guilty of lèse‐nation by the Paris Commune.¹⁰³ However, the authorities were by now alert to the threat of mob violence,¹⁰⁴ and Besenval had had time to marshal his legal defence. One line of this was that he had been obeying the orders of the then legitimate authority, namely the king, and that no decree to the contrary was issued until 13 July 1789 – and even then not published in legal form.¹⁰⁵ This was an argument used by Besenval’s supporters in the ensuing pamphlet war¹⁰⁶ and one taken up by La Fayette, one of the Revolution’s early heroes, who wanted to distinguish between those who plotted counter‐revolution and those who had simply obeyed the previously legitimate orders of the king.¹⁰⁷ In addition, soldiers and non‐commissioned officers of the Swiss Guards had protested in September to the National Assembly at Besenval’s imprisonment.¹⁰⁸

**Fig. 9**
Hubert Robert, *The Cell of the baron de Besenval in the Prison of the Châtelet*, 1789/90. Oil on canvas, 37 × 45 cm. Paris, Musée du Louvre. PARIS Musée du Louvre © RMN‐Grand Palais (musée du Louvre) / Michel Urtado

Besenval described his stay at the Châtelet as a ‘un séjour abominable’ but acknowledged that he was given the almoner’s room, not a cell, and was allowed the services of his valet, to order meals from the best caterer in Paris, and to see his friends and his legal counsel.¹⁰⁹ Among these were his friend and secretary, Després, and his lawyer, Raymond Romain, the comte de Sèze, who four years later was to defend Louis XVI before the National Convention.¹¹⁰ Another visitor was the artist Hubert Robert, who executed a small painting of Besenval’s prison accommodation in which the baron’s name is inscribed on the portfolio case propped up against the window ledge (fig. 9).¹¹¹ Besenval’s trial, which started on 19 November 1789¹¹² and served as a vehicle [page 126] for putting the entire ‘aristocratic conspiracy’ of July 1789 on trial,¹¹³ was a matter of considerable controversy at the time. Although Besenval was not entirely without popular support,¹¹⁴ crowds, incited by Jean‐Paul Marat among others,¹¹⁵ would gather outside the prison demanding his condemnation and death. Ultimately Besenval, who was said to have been unquestionably steadfast and calm throughout the trial,¹¹⁶ was acquitted. He was helped by the fact that a more obviously culpable accused, Thomas de Mahy, marquis de Favras, who had been part of a failed plot for Louis XVI’s escape, was on trial at the same time and so could serve as a sacrifice to popular feeling.¹¹⁷ Indeed, it may well be that Besenval’s release was timed to coincide as closely as possible with Favras’s execution in order to mute popular protest.¹¹⁸

**Fig. 10**
Jacques‐Philippe Le Bas after Jean‐Michel Moreau le Jeune, *Le Festin de Pierre*, 1770. Etching and engraving, 18.2 × 11.1 cm. London, The British Museum. LONDON The British Museum © The Trustees of the British Museum

Besenval was provisionally freed on 21 January 1790¹¹⁹ and, according to the duchesse de Tourzel, governess to the royal children, he went the following day to pay his respects to the king and queen, who ‘showed him in the most touching manner the joy they felt on seeing him again, the anxieties he had caused them, adding a thousand questions about his imprisonment and the way he had been treated’.¹²⁰ Following his release, and a failed attempt to rehabilitate himself before his district assembly,¹²¹ Besenval retired from military service and played no further part in French public life. Although he espoused strongly royalist views to his friends to the end,¹²² Besenval kept such a low public profile that some thought that he had left for England.¹²³ His freedom was confirmed, and his innocence of all charges declared, on 1 March 1790, following Sèze’s plea that day to the court,¹²⁴ but in spite of the relative comfort of his prison sojourn his health had suffered. In July 1790 he had the first of a series of strokes from which he was to die on 2 June of the following year.¹²⁵ On the night of his death he had 25 friends for dinner, including his mistress, Mme de La Suze. Feeling unwell, Besenval stayed in his bedroom but suddenly joined the diners. Looking terribly thin and dressed in a long white robe, he announced in a sepulchral voice: ‘C’est l’ombre du Commandeur qui vous fait visite’. With that joking reference both to his former occupation and to Molière’s comedy, Dom Juan, ou Le Festin de Pierre (fig. 10), he retired and died an hour later.¹²⁶ In spite of, or perhaps because of, his libertine life and thanks to the persuasions of a priest, Besenval received the sacraments on his deathbed from a priest who had sworn to uphold France’s Revolutionary Constitution.¹²⁷ Mme de La Suze was ‘much afflicted’ by the death of her lover.¹²⁸

Besenval as a Patron of the Fine Arts

Beyond commissioning family portraits, for example by Largillierre,¹²⁹ Besenval’s parents’ most significant patronage of the visual arts was his father’s commission awarded in 1734 to Sébastien Le Clerc the Younger to paint a series of ten allegories of liberal arts and virtues,¹³⁰ and his mother’s commissioning of Juste‐Aurèle Meissonnier to design elaborate architectural mouldings for her Paris apartment,¹³¹ and a monument (destroyed in the Revolution) to her late husband erected in the church of Saint‐Sulpice, Paris.¹³² Jean‐Victor de Besenval also commissioned two bronze portrait busts from Jacques Caffieri, one of himself and the other of Pierre‐Joseph‐Victor.¹³³ The beginning of what was to prove his son’s abiding interest in the fine arts cannot be precisely dated, although it may be significant that his sister, the marquise de Broglie, was a close friend of the noted patron of French painting Carl Gustav Tessin, Swedish ambassador to Paris in the years 1739 to 1742. At all events Besenval had certainly established a relationship with the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture by 1760. The Académie’s minutes record that on 31 May that year, ‘excité par son amour pour les Arts’, Besenval had agreed to release from military duties a soldier whom it wished to use as a life model. To mark its gratitude the Académie presented Besenval with one of its prizewinning paintings, Moses trampling underfoot Pharaoh’s Crown, 1725 (location unknown) by Louis‐Michel Vanloo.¹³⁴ Among the artists attending the meeting were Nattier, who had painted the baron’s portrait in 1744 and that of the marquise de Broglie two years earlier, as well as Carle Vanloo, Joseph‐Marie Vien and Louis‐Jean‐François Lagrenée, works by all of whom Besenval would own at his death.¹³⁵

Besenval’s association with the Académie was a continuing one. In 1767 he failed in his attempt to be elected [page 127] an honoraire associé libre of the Académie, securing only three votes against the 27 cast for each of l’abbé François‐Emmanuel Pommyer and the intendant des menus plaisirs, Berthélémy‐Augustin‐Blondel d’Azincourt.¹³⁶ He was, however, elected in 1769 and took his seat in the assembly.¹³⁷ In 1784 he was promoted to the rank of honoraire amateur, his good friend Philippe‐Henri de Ségur being appointed to fill the resulting vacancy in the ranks of the honoraire associés libres.¹³⁸

**Fig. 11**
Jean‐Michel Chevotet, *The hôtel de Besenval, formerly hôtel de Pompadour, Elevation onto the Garden*, date unknown. Pen and black ink and blue and yellow‐green washes on paper, 17.8 × 30.2 cm. Paris, Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux‐Arts, Lessoufaché Collection. PARIS Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux‐Arts © Beaux‐Arts de Paris, Dist. RMN‐Grand Palais / image Beaux‐arts de Paris

**Fig. 12**
Alexandre‐Théodore Brongniart, *Longditudinal View of the Salle des bains of the hôtel de Besenval*, by 1782. Pen, ink and wash on paper, 33.5 × 51.5 cm, Paris, Musée du Louvre. PARIS Musée du Louvre © RMN‐Grand Palais (musée du Louvre) / Michèle Bellot

Besenval’s activities as a patron may have started around 1760, when he was first recorded as helping the Académie, and they may have been accelerated by his inheriting wealth on his mother’s death in 1761. Although he was an active campaigner in Germany during the Seven Years War (see above, he may have acquired paintings on the Paris art market in absentia, as did, for example, the duc de Choiseul.¹³⁹ Alternatively, he may have found opportunities to make acquisitions during his service abroad, as had another military officer, the marquis de Voyer d’Argenson, during the War of the Austrian Succession.¹⁴⁰ It was only in 1764 that he rented from the successors of the late Bishop of Rennes¹⁴¹ a hôtel particulier on the rue de Grenelle that was to remain his home for the rest of his life.¹⁴² The property had been built in 1704 for the abbé Pierre VI Chanac de Pompadour (no relation of the celebrated marquise) to the design of the architect Pierre‐Alexis Delamair. Delamair’s design, as shown in drawings by Jean‐Michel Chevotet, was for a single storey with attic rooms above (fig. 11). It was as such, and without material modification, that in 1767 Besenval bought the hôtel he had been renting for the previous three years for 170,000 livres (including 6,000 livres for furniture).¹⁴³

Towards the end of Besenval’s life the hôtel’s interior disposition was recorded as consisting of a cabinet, an antechamber, a bedroom, a stairway to the baths, a gallery, a library, a dining room, another bedroom, and a small cabinet with a view of the garden. Upstairs were the staff apartments and rooms.¹⁴⁴ The main structural alterations effected by Besenval were the addition of a storey, the building of a paintings gallery lit from above, and in 1782 the construction in the basement of a salle de bains.¹⁴⁵ This room, celebrated in Besenval’s lifetime, was completed in 1782 to the designs of the architect Brongniart.¹⁴⁶ The salle de bains was approached by a staircase, itself remarkable for appearing to have no support.¹⁴⁷ This led to a vestibule, which led through double doors decorated with bronze mascarons to the salle de bains itself. This was a rectangular room about 10 m long and 6 m wide,¹⁴⁸ clad in yellow cut pierre de tonnerre and, according to a contemporary, ‘éclairée mystérieusement’.¹⁴⁹ The ceiling [page 128] was supported by both engaged and freestanding Tuscan columns. The pairs of columns at the ends of the room flanked niches decorated with friezes and furnished with vases, and in one case a sculpture by Clodion. The centre of the room was occupied by an elliptical bath some 3.5 m in diameter (fig. 12).¹⁵⁰ The sculpted bas‐reliefs by Clodion at each end of the room were respectively of Venus and Cupid with Leda and the Swan and Pan pursuing Syrinx under the Gaze of Cupid and together represented the Triumph of Love.¹⁵¹ The room was enhanced by two pairs of monumental ovoid vases, unusual for having right‐angled handles, and decorated with reliefs by Clodion on Bacchic themes.¹⁵² The sculpture by Clodion at one end of the room was an over‐life‐size female nude, La Source, recorded in a photograph taken around the beginning of the last century (fig. 13),¹⁵³ and owned by Maurice de Rothschild by 1924.¹⁵⁴ Water was fed into the bath from a bronze mask inserted into its pedestal.¹⁵⁵ Scherf has pointed out that large‐scale sculpted figures of the female nude were rare, and even then were nearly always upright, so that Besenval’s commission of a reclining nude can be seen as the caprice of someone who saw himself as a connoisseur of female nudity.¹⁵⁶ The salle de bains as a whole has reasonably been described as a temple to erotic love and to feminine beauty.¹⁵⁷ In September 1793 Louise Brongniart (née d’Egremont) wrote to her husband, the architect Alexandre‐Théodore, of a recent visit she had made to what had been until Besenval’s then recent death his hôtel: But one thing that gave me great pleasure were the baths. My friend, it’s one of your creations which will bring you the greatest honour. They have the character of the antique. On account of the humidity the stonework has a dilapidated look which well suits the room… But the sculpture is really depressing and is inconceivably unsuited to the architecture.¹⁵⁸ The eroticism of Besenval’s taste was not confined to the salle de bains. His collection of contemporary paintings included Vien’s Jeune Greque endormie painted for him in 1772,¹⁵⁹ of which Clodion’s La Source may have been a commissioned paragone.¹⁶⁰ Other erotic, or at least suggestive, contemporary works of art acquired by Besenval included, in probable chronological order of execution, a gouache by Pierre‐Antoine Baudouin, The Lovers surprised (1764);¹⁶¹ Greuze’s pastel study, The Beloved Mother, executed by 1765 and characterised as ‘vividly frank in its depiction of swooning ecstasy ’ (Washington, National Gallery of Art);¹⁶² another gouache by Baudouin, Les soins tardifs (Salon 1767, no. 100), which Besenval bought in 1784;¹⁶³ Louis‐Jean‐François Lagrenée’s red chalk study for the figure of the bather in Une Baigneuse qui regarde deux colombes se caresser, as well as the painting itself of 1769 lent by Besenval to the 1771 Paris Salon (no. 8) (France, private collection);¹⁶⁴ and Fragonard’s La Gimblette of about 1775 now known through Bertoni’s engraving of 1783 dedicated to Besenval (fig. 14).¹⁶⁵ Also among contemporary paintings owned by Besenval were Une jeune femme vêtue en sultane by Jean‐Baptiste Le Prince,¹⁶⁶ and Une jeune Blanchisseuse sortant de son lit by Nicolas‐Bernard Lépicié.¹⁶⁷ Besenval’s sculptures included the original model for the marble Venus standing (Potsdam, Sanssouci) by Guillaume Coustou the Younger, commissioned by Frederick the Great of Prussia in 1764.¹⁶⁸

**Fig. 13**
Claude‐Michel Clodion, *La Source*, by 1782. Whereabouts unknown. Photograph taken about 1900 at the château de Digoine. © The National Gallery, London

Not all of the contemporary works owned by Besenval were erotic. His posthumous sale included two marble busts by René‐Michel (also called Michel‐Ange) Slodtz, Chrysès and Iphigénie, replicas of the marbles now in the Musée des Beaux‐Arts de Lyon, and not necessarily bought direct from the sculptor,¹⁶⁹ and a (marble?) bust of a child by Augustin Pajou. Among the pieces of furniture he owned, the most precious were a commode of about 1778 now in the Royal Collection made by Martin Carlin and Dominique Daguerre decorated with seventeenth‐century pietra dura panels;¹⁷⁰ and a cartel clock by Michel Stollewerck made in Paris around 1770 and a cartel barometer of the same approximate date, both now in the Wallace Collection.¹⁷¹ As for paintings by contemporaries, there were, among others, a Saint Catherine[page 129] by Carle Vanloo,¹⁷² and, by the same artist, The Arts beseeching Destiny to spare the Life of Madame de Pompadour of 1764, bought by Besenval in or after 1783;¹⁷³ two pairs of paintings by Claude‐Joseph Vernet; and two marine pictures by Philippe‐Jacques de Loutherbourg. Most of Besenval’s paintings were, however, by old masters, some Italian, a few French, but, like those in the collection of his friend the duc de Choiseul, mainly Dutch and Flemish.¹⁷⁴ An analysis of the approximately seventy old masters in Besenval’s collection,¹⁷⁵ and their possible identification, belongs elsewhere, but a few of these paintings form part of the background of NG 6598 and are discussed below.

**Fig. 14**
Bertoni after Jean‐Honoré Fragonard, *La Gimblette*, 1783. Engraving, 43.9 × 53.4 cm. Paris, Musée du Louvre. PARIS Musée du Louvre © RMN‐Grand Palais (musée du Louvre) / Tony Querrec

Danloux’s Portrait, NG 6598

Composition

Besenval spent lavishly to the end of his life: 27,000 livres in the first five months of 1791 according to a recent account.¹⁷⁶ Presumably that figure included the cost of Danloux’s portrait, which was probably painted that year,¹⁷⁷ and possibly the cost of other pictures and objets d’art. In the preface to Besenval’s Mémoires, his son, Joseph‐Alexandre de Ségur, wrote of ‘the very acute love which he had for the Arts and which he adored without studying or researching them’; he continued; but that so certain touch combined with uncommon taste came to his rescue, and dominated as much in the choice of the superb collection he formed as in his firm opinions in the Académie de peinture of which he was an honorary member. The artists whom he liked and protected, and by whom he was cherished, as much for his qualities as for the services he used to render them, were often surprised by the intelligence with which he spoke of their art; and I several times heard sculptors, painters, architects swear that they owed ideas and their success to his enlightened opinions.¹⁷⁸ If Besenval’s patronage became less evident in the final decade of his life, his love of collecting remained. Less than three weeks after Besenval had been declared innocent of the crime of lèse‐nation the 29‐year‐old Wilhelm von Wolzogen, a native of Württenberg who was in Paris to study architecture, met ‘Besenwald’, as he called him, at Lebrun’s auction rooms: … he’s a man well advanced in years, tall, grey hair, nothing of the petit maître, but with that refined aristocratic tone so particular as to be inimitable and which cannot be acquired other than at the cost of 40 years experience; in truth one would not know what to say it consists of, so delicate are its nuances.¹⁷⁹ The baron had gone to Lebrun’s on 20 March 1790 to preview an estate sale of some 650 paintings.¹⁸⁰ In Danloux’s portrait none of the works that Besenval had acquired from his artist contemporaries is shown. Instead it is old master paintings and porcelain that form the backdrop to the picture. As Bailey has pointed out, it was rare for French collectors to have themselves so portrayed. One comparable extant item is the miniature view by Louis‐Nicolas Van Blarenberghe painted on a snuffbox of the duc de Choiseul’s picture cabinet, both of which (the picture cabinet and the snuffbox) Besenval probably knew.¹⁸¹ Recently two other French ‘collector portraits’ have been identified, namely those of Léonard Bathéon de Vertrieu by Charles Grandon, dated 1745, and of (reputedly) M. de Vence and attributed to Robert Levrac‐Tournières.¹⁸²

Furniture, Fittings and Objets D'art

Besenval is shown seated on an upholstered wing chair with its wooden arms and legs left unpainted and ungilded (similar to one recently identified as bearing the stamp of Claude Chevigny, who was received as a maître in 1768, so providing an approximate date for style of the chair in NG 6598).¹⁸³ He is leaning on a fire screen the profile of whose frame is of a style used around the same period, although the silk (?) chinoiserie fabric, which was no longer the height of fashion in the Louis XVI period, may be earlier.¹⁸⁴ The chimneypiece is made of one of the types of highly variegated marbles fashionable during the rococo period, namely brèche violette marble,¹⁸⁵ which was much in use in the 1740s for chimneypieces and the tops of pieces of furniture.¹⁸⁶ The style of the chimneypiece was also fashionable in the 1740s, but may have persisted through the 1760s.¹⁸⁷ The mirror frame may also date from the 1740s, while the gilt‐bronze firedog is later, perhaps of around 1770. The motif on the firedog, a vase with satyr heads, is similar to that forming the finial of a pair of gilt‐bronze wall lights recently on the art market and there attributed to Philippe Caffieri.¹⁸⁸ Their backplates were also like that of the wall light to the right of the mirror in NG 6598, but they had three branches, including a central lower one, of which there is no evidence in the portrait, which presumably had branches at either side only. Besenval’s wall light nevertheless probably came from the same workshop.

Also shown in NG 6598 are various objets d’art.¹⁸⁹ Besenval’s posthumous sale included many items of oriental porcelain. Probably the vases on the mantelpiece are part of lot 148, ‘Une magnifique garniture, composée de sept vases de différentes formes, en porcelaine, celadon de ton clair. Cet article, distinguée dans son genre, est décoré de riches ornemens en bronze, d’ancien genre, parfaitement ciselés & dorées d’or moulu’, that is, a set of seven celadon vases in rococo style gilt‐bronze mounts. In that case it is possible that the three vases depicted were each one of a pair, of which the other was placed on the left side of the mantelpiece, and that the seventh item was placed in the centre, although there is no hint of such an item where one might have expected it, that is at the extreme left of NG 6598. Of the three vases depicted, some pairs of the type at the left in the shape of a bamboo stem are known, including a pair in the Victoria and Albert Museum.¹⁹⁰ The type in the middle, in the form of a carp, arrived in France in some numbers during the [page 130] eighteenth century: an ormolu mounted pair is first recorded in October 1750 in the Livre‐Journal of the marchand mercier Lazare Duvaux, who sold it to Mme de Pompadour.¹⁹¹ Lazare Duvaux sold other such pairs to well‐known collectors, such as Jean de Jullienne and Blondel d’Azincourt,¹⁹² and a pair of vases in the slightly different form of aoyu fish rather than carp and mounted as ewers is in the Royal Collection, there dated 1730–40, with ormolu mounts dated 1745–55.¹⁹³ That shown in NG 6598 may be one of ‘deux carpes sur des rochers s’élevant sur leurs queues’ recorded in an inventory of Besenval’s possessions made on 4 December 1786, if this does not refer to the porcelain fish shown behind his chair and further mentioned below.¹⁹⁴ The vase at the right is of a type known as clair de lune, and has ormolu cherub clasps and floral garlands. Pairs of vases of this type also are known, including one in the Metropolitan Museum, New York (inv. 49.7.80, 81). A clair de lune vase and its mount (one of a pair) sold at Christie’s, London, 6 December 2007, lot 130, is identical in design to that in NG 6598, and may indeed be the same vase.¹⁹⁵

**Fig. 15**
Japanese Arita carp, about 1735–50. Cast and gilded bronze, 26.7 × 12.7 cm. Private collection. PRIVATE COLLECTIONS © Courtesy of Christophe de Quénetain

The porcelain fish behind Besenval’s chair has been identified by MaryAnne Stevens as of Japanese Arita porcelain, late seventeenth‐century with Louis XV gilt‐bronze mounts.¹⁹⁶ This type of carp is mentioned four times in the Livre‐Journal of Lazare Duvaux, all unmounted, including a pair sold on 20 March 1756 to the duc d’Orléans.¹⁹⁷ One of a pair was sketched by Gabriel de Saint‐Aubin in the margin of a page of a copy of the catalogue of the Gaignat sale (Paris, 14 December 1769, lot 122), where the lot is described: ‘Deux carpes de porcelaine de Japon, sur leurs rochers vernissés en partie.’¹⁹⁸ Mounted examples are rarer than the celadon carp discussed above but exist in a few private collections, and in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, and the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.¹⁹⁹ The extant example which is closest to that shown in NG 6598 is an Arita porcelain carp in a private collection (fig. 15). It is mounted as an inkstand with the base – patterned as a rock and waterfall – cut horizontally in two parts. The inside of each part is capped in ormolu along the serpentined edges, and the top half has four holes on top with a gilt‐bronze border in which to fit a quill. It is not possible to be absolutely certain that it is the object shown in NG 6598 because the horizontal division in the base of the inkstand is not indicated in the painting and there are slight differences in the shape of the fish’s dorsal fin. There are also slight differences in colour, although in this respect Danloux may have deliberately drained the item of its bright hues better to fit the overall tonalities of the painting.²⁰⁰ At all events its position on top of (what appears to be) a type of cabinet known as a ‘meuble à hauteur d’appui’, and among other decorative objects, suggests that its function as an inkstand, if that is what it was, had been all but abandoned.²⁰¹ Too little of the cabinet is depicted in NG 6598 to allow for its description, let alone identification, but from what little can be seen it appears to share a style of gilt‐bronze decoration at the bottom with a pair of bookcases of around 1770 by Jean‐Louis Faizelot‐Delorme (maître 1763) now in the Wallace Collection, which may once have belonged to Besenval.²⁰²

The prominence of these objects in NG 6598, and the style of the picture frames,²⁰³ suggests that, in spite of the up‐to‐the‐minute style of the salle de bains designed by Brongniart and his patronage of contemporary artists, Besenval also continued to appreciate a style which was old‐fashioned by around 1790.

Paintings

As described by Thiéry in 1787, most of the paintings in Besenval’s collection were in the salon,²⁰⁴ as were a number of sculptures, including a life‐size Cupid drawing his Bow by Martin‐Claude Monot. The room contained both contemporary and old master paintings. Besides those of the French painters noted above, Besenval’s collection included works attributed to Sébastien Bourdon, Pierre Mignard and Antoine Watteau. There were also paintings of the Italian school, but more of the Dutch and Flemish schools. All genres were represented. Such eclecticism was typical of eighteenth‐century Paris collections, and hanging pictures on green damask, as shown in NG 6598, was far from unusual.²⁰⁵ The arrangement of the paintings here (fig. 16, overleaf) is as described by Thiéry:²⁰⁶ … dans le Salon …Du côté de la cheminée … Deux jolis tableaux de Corneille Poëlembourg. Un tableau de David Teniers, & un autre de Jacques Ostade. Un intérieur d’église par Steenvick. Un charmant Paysage de Kuyp. Deux Marines par Guillaume Vandenvelden. Une Danaë par Carle Maratte. Une Léda, du même …²⁰⁷[page 131] As Bailey pointed out, the eighteenth‐century attributions should be treated with caution,²⁰⁸ but by reference to Thiéry’s description and to the catalogue of Besenval’s posthumous sale of 1795 he identified the paintings shown in NG 6598 as follows: Parts of four other paintings appear in the reflection of the mirror – these are yet to be identified, but it has been suggested that two may be Vernet’s large Neapolitan coastal scenes noted by Thiéry on the wall opposite the chimneypiece,²¹⁶ and one appears to be of an artist before his easel.²¹⁷ One thing that jars the modern eye is that not only were Besenval’s pictures hung close together (as was usual at the time, both in the Salon and in private collections),²¹⁸ but that the frames of two of the reflected paintings are touching and their hang is not completely symmetrical.

(1) At left, underneath the fragment of the oval picture, one of a pair of Italianate landscapes by Cornelis van Poelenburgh.²⁰⁹
(2) Below this, to the left of Besenval’s head, an unattributed portrait of an artist.²¹⁰
(3) Behind Besenval’s head, in the middle of the group is the painting by David Teniers the Younger described as a ‘Rustic Interior’ in the 1795 sale.²¹¹ In support of Bailey’s identification are the letters ‘TE’, followed by others that cannot be deciphered, visible on the cartouche on the picture’s frame.
(4) To the right of the Teniers, according to Bailey, is the painting described in the 1795 sale catalogue as a ‘belle soirée d’été’ by Adam Pynacker, but attributed by Thiéry to Jacques (sic) Ostade, presumably a reference to Isack van Ostade.²¹² This identification is not free from doubt since the position of the cartouche at the top of the frame suggests a painting twice as wide as it is high, whereas the measurements in the 1795 catalogue approximate to 48.7 × 67.7 cm. However, that catalogue offers no better candidate, so it is possible that the painting in question was sold by Besenval or his heirs before 1795.
(5) Above the supposed Pynacker and in the top right corner of NG 6598 is a landscape by Aelbert Cuyp, presumably the ‘charmant paysage de Kuyp [sic]’ noted by Thiéry. Its identification by Bailey with no. 48 of the 1795 sale seems perfectly plausible.²¹³
(6) To the left of that and at the top of NG 6598 is one of the two Van de Velde marine pictures noted by Thiéry.²¹⁴
(7) To the left of this is probably one of two oval pictures by Carlo Maratta, of which one was a Leda and the Swan and the other a Danaë.²¹⁵

Parts of four other paintings appear in the reflection of the mirror – these are yet to be identified, but it has been suggested that two may be Vernet’s large Neapolitan coastal scenes noted by Thiéry on the wall opposite the chimneypiece,²¹⁶ and one appears to be of an artist before his easel.²¹⁷ One thing that jars the modern eye is that not only were Besenval’s pictures hung close together (as was usual at the time, both in the Salon and in private collections),²¹⁸ but that the frames of two of the reflected paintings are touching and their hang is not completely symmetrical.

²¹⁶ and one appears to be of an artist before his easel.²¹⁷ One thing that jars the modern eye is that not only were Besenval’s pictures hung close together (as was usual at the time, both in the Salon and in private collections),²¹⁸ but that the frames of two of the reflected paintings are touching and their hang is not completely symmetrical.

and one appears to be of an artist before his easel.²¹⁷ One thing that jars the modern eye is that not only were Besenval’s pictures hung close together (as was usual at the time, both in the Salon and in private collections),²¹⁸ but that the frames of two of the reflected paintings are touching and their hang is not completely symmetrical.

²¹⁷ One thing that jars the modern eye is that not only were Besenval’s pictures hung close together (as was usual at the time, both in the Salon and in private collections),²¹⁸ but that the frames of two of the reflected paintings are touching and their hang is not completely symmetrical.

One thing that jars the modern eye is that not only were Besenval’s pictures hung close together (as was usual at the time, both in the Salon and in private collections),²¹⁸ but that the frames of two of the reflected paintings are touching and their hang is not completely symmetrical.

²¹⁸ but that the frames of two of the reflected paintings are touching and their hang is not completely symmetrical.

but that the frames of two of the reflected paintings are touching and their hang is not completely symmetrical.

Although collecting pictures and objets d’art form an important part of the narrative of NG 6598, the sitter’s attitude to such activity may have been relatively light‐hearted. In Besenval’s novel Spleen, his narrator talks about his fictive collection of pictures: The fame of my collection … brought several experts to see it: I had the mortification of hearing the majority of those which I valued most condemned as being merely copies, and of being considered by the experts to be an ignorant dupe. Only one picture met with their approval, but a clumsy servant, on moving it, by my orders, let it fall on a ladder and split it from top to bottom, so badly that it was beyond repair. I still had my china, but one night part of the panelling of the room in which I had arranged it fell down and reduced it to shards.²¹⁹

Dating

A preparatory drawing by Danloux shows Besenval seated with his legs crossed, as in NG 6598, but with his face and upper body turned towards the viewer instead of in profile (fig. 1). In the background of the drawing are sketchy indications of the fire surround and the paintings that appear in the finished portrait, as well as the fire screen on which the baron is leaning. In both the drawing and the painting Besenval is holding an object in his proper left hand, probably a snuffbox. There is a suggestion in the drawing that he is wearing a decoration on his chest. If so, it would be the Grand Cross of the Order of Saint Louis. He wears no decoration in the painting, and one possibility is that in the political climate of 1791, when NG 6598 is believed to have been painted, he thought it prudent to avoid showing a decoration associated both with his services in the Swiss Guards and with the Ancien Régime, which from the beginning of that year had by decree of the National Assembly lost its name.²²⁰ The significance of the objects in the painting has been enhanced by the change of pose from full face to profile. If painted as in the drawing, the sitter would have caught the viewer’s eye more readily, but at the expense of the pictures and other objects in the background. Consequently one can speculate that, besides the fact that profile portraiture was then in fashion,²²¹ Besenval chose to reduce his relative impact within the painting – in a sense becoming part of his own collection rather than standing out from it.

The nature of NG 6598 offers no clue as to its date, since Danloux painted a number of single seated figures shown full length in an interior from the late 1780s (the marquise de Folleville) to 1795 (the musician Jan Ladislav Dussek),²²² and the motif of the mirror parallel to the picture plane had been used by Danloux at least as early as 1782.²²³ There is, however, every reason to suppose that it was painted in 1791. In the first place Danloux mentions that he frequented the baron’s residence during the last months of his life, albeit without specifying the reason for his doing so.²²⁴ In addition, the composition of NG 6598 shows some resemblance to Danloux’s portrait of his wife, Marie‐Antoinette Danloux, née Saint‐Redan, painted in 1790 (fig. 17). Finally, the apparently deliberate omission of Besenval’s Grand Cross of the Order of Saint Louis supports a date to a time after the start of the Revolution; since Besenval was in flight or in prison outside Paris from July to November 1789, the latter date would in any event provide a terminus post quem.

In his description of the hôtel de Besenval published in 1787, Thiéry said that ‘En rentrant dans la chambre [page [132-133]][page 134] à coucher, & traversant le grand cabinet, on arrive à une galerie que vient de faire construire M.le Baron de Besenval, pour y rassembler les tableaux qui composent sa collection. Cette galerie est éclairée par le haut [my italics]’.²²⁵ This gallery certainly was in being in August 1789, when its existence, but not its contents, was noted by the representatives of the Paris Commune.²²⁶ However, as is clear from the reflections on the celadon vases in NG 6598, as well as from the fall of light in the painting generally, the room in which Besenval is shown is not top lit but side lit. Consequently, one must assume that, because the hang of pictures here is so close to that described in Besenval’s salon by Thiéry in 1787, the baron chose to leave his paintings, or at least those shown in NG 6598, in his salon rather than to rehang them in the gallery. An alternative hypothesis would be that NG 6598 was painted before Thiéry published his account. However, for the reasons given, this is unlikely.

**Fig. 16**
Detail from NG 6598. © The National Gallery, London

Besenval is shown wearing a stylish version of the plain cutaway English coat, probably made of a silk/wool fabric with a velvet collar, which, together with the black satin knee‐breeches, was suitable for an elderly man of conservative taste.²²⁷ He holds a rectangular snuffbox and is portrayed as a man of refinement with a taste matched by Danloux’s careful technique and attention to detail. The rendering of the different textures of flesh, fabric, porcelain, marble and wood shows consummate skill. The contrast between the dark green of the chair and the grey of the sitter’s coat, the red splash of the waistcoat and the greens of the damask wall covering and of the celadon porcelain set against the gilt of the mounts and picture frames, create exceptional colour harmonies. Besenval has had himself commemorated as a collector in a painting worthy of a collector. This, his pose and his studied calm all suggest a more leisured, less politically turbulent time. It is a time on which at the end of his life Besenval seems to be reflecting and remembering with quiet satisfaction.²²⁸ After Roger de Portalis finally went to see the picture (having persuaded the artist’s grandson Antonin Danloux to pay half his travel costs), he summarised it as ‘d’une intimité charmante dans son cabinet au milieu de ses tableaux et de ses chinoiseries’.²²⁹

**Fig. 17**
Henri‐Pierre Danloux, *Marie‐Antoinette Danloux, née Redan, standing before a Mantelpiece in the château de Passy*, 1790. Oil on canvas, 40 × 32 cm. Whereabouts unknown. © The National Gallery, London

General References

Portalis 1910, pp. 44–9; An Aspect of Collecting Taste 1986, no. 17 (entry by C.B. Bailey); Adams 1987, pp. 5, 8, 24 and fig. 13, and Appendix I – Danloux: Works 1767–1792, p. ix, as painted 1791; Wintermute 1989, no. 8 (entry by C.B. Bailey); Bailey 2003, no. 105 (entry by C.B. Bailey); National Gallery Review 2005 pp. 14–15 (entry by H. Wine); Guichard 2008, pp. 48–9.

Notes

1 Schmid 1912–13, p. 925. In his introductory biographical note to Besenval 1823, an edition of Besenval’s memoires, Besenval’s former secretary, Després, wrote that Besenval ‘s’était fait un cabinet de tableaux choisis dans les trois écoles, et passait pour un très bon juge. L’homme bien organisé n’a pas besoin d’une étude approfondie du dessin et de la théorie des arts. L’instinct du beau lui suffit. Il n’en sait pas assez pour se tromper. M. le maréchal de Ségur et le vicomte de Ségur fils ont hérité de cette précieuse collection’ (pp. xxix–xxx). The maréchal de Ségur was given a life interest in Besenval’s Paris estate, including the house and its considerable contents, with the remainder to Joseph‐Alexandre de Ségur, Besenval’s natural son. The latter arranged to sell the paintings in Besenval’s collection, but presumably this did not include the family portraits. On Joseph‐Alexandre’s death on 27 July 1805 he left his whole estate (subject to certain specified legacies) to his son Alexandre‐Joseph, then a minor. Among the other legacies detailed in Joseph‐Alexandre’s will was one whereby he left his portraits of Besenval to the latter’s family in Switzerland; but he also left to Després ‘tous les tableaux qu’il choisira dans ma collection’. Després presumably included NG 6598 in his choice, ignoring the portrait element in the painting, something which, given its unusual nature, was not unreasonable. (On the wills of Besenval and of Joseph‐Alexandre, see Broglie 1977, pp. 141, 274–6.) Besenval’s collection of paintings was still at his hôtel during the summer of 1793, because on 3 September of that year Louise Brongniart wrote to her husband, the architect Alexandre‐Théodore Brongniart, who was then in Bordeaux: ‘Vous devez avoir reçu une lettre d’Émilie [their youngest child and the sitter in NG 5871] dans laquelle elle vous rend compte du déjeuner qui nous avons fait chez M. Després et des beaux tableaux que nous avons vus’ (cited in Silvestre de Sacy 1940, p. 62). However, the paintings must have been removed from the hôtel de Besenval before October 1797, when a judgment of the Civil Tribunal of the Seine (23 vendémiaire, an VI) confirmed its sale by the Ségurs to Mme veuve Demoreton: Silvestre de Sacy 1940, p. 62, note 5. (Back to text.)

2 Després became editor of a royalist journal, Le Feuille du jour, at the start of the Revolution and was Besenval’s secretary during the period 1781–9: Besenval 1987 edn, p. 561, note 216 (although the period of Després secretaryship is given as 1783–9 in Silvestre de Sacy 1940, p. 61, note 1, probably relying for the first date on a passage in Grimm’s Correspondence littéraire: Tourneux 1877–82, vol. 13, p. 324). Després wrote a number of plays and poems and, as Antonio Mazzotta kindly informed me, he collaborated with Besenval’s natural son, Joseph‐Alexandre de Ségur (and Jean‐Louis Brousse‐Desfaucherets) in writing a comedy, Le Portrait [page 135]de Fielding, Paris, an VII [1799]. He was detained during the Terror and owed his release to a patriotic play, L’Alarmiste, written and played under his name, but in fact written by two of his friends. Thereafter he was appointed secretary of the council for commerce, and then for that of agriculture, before his appointment as Conseiller d’Etat to Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland. Following his return to France, Després was made a member of the council of the University of Paris. He also translated works from English and Latin and contributed the article on Alexandre‐Théodore Brongniart to Michaud’s Biographie universelle: Silvestre de Sacy 1940, p. 61, note 1.

According to Mémoires de la Comtesse du Maisniel, 1892 (Cherisey Archives Familiales, ref. J.L.C.), a Despres (sic) was the second husband of Mme de Joncy. He was probably the same Després who had been Besenval’s secretary. Mme de Joncy had inherited the château de Crécy where the then Count and Countess of Chérisey lived. She was the mother of the aunt of the comtesse du Maisniel, who was in turn the great niece of the 3rd marquis de Chérisey, Charles‐Louis. The Chérisey family was one of the most important in Lorraine; the family seat was at Chérisey, 14 km south of Metz: Notice sur la famille de Chérisey. Extrait de la Statistique historique du department de la Moselle, publié par Verronnais (1844; BN , MFICHE 8‐LM3‐207).

In Wintermute 1989, no. 8 (entry by Colin B. Bailey), NG 6598 is said to have been in the possession of Charles‐Louis, ‘styled’ marquis de Chérisey, in 1827. If that is correct, then the likely provenance would be from Ségur to Després, then by gift to the 3rd marquis de Chérisey, on whose death in 1827 by inheritance to his youngest child, François‐Louis‐Victor, comte de Chérisey. According to the Du Maisniel memoirs, François‐Louis‐Victor lived with his wife at Crécy from when they were ‘bien jeunes’. Portalis, who published his work on Danloux in 1910, evidently saw the picture there before it was sold at auction in 1909 from the estate of François‐Louis‐Victor’s eldest son, so it seems likely that it was to François‐Louis‐Victor, rather than to another child, that the 3rd marquis bequeathed the painting (if it was his will rather than that of Mme Després under which the picture passed).

The 3rd marquis de Chérisey held the rank of Mestre de Camp in the cavalry in 1779 and was in the service of Louis XVI when the Paris populace invaded the palace of Versailles on 5/6 October 1789. He became an émigré soldier in the royalist forces. He followed Louis XVIII to Ghent in 1814, in which year he was made Commander of the Order of Saint Louis. He retired the following year to the château of Chérisey with a pension, and was promoted to the rank of the Grand Cross of the Order of Saint Louis in 1823. His father and grandfather had been military officers and members of the Order of Saint Louis. (Back to text.)

3 Infantry colonel and grandson of the 3rd marquis. (Back to text.)

4 Portalis 1910, p. 46. The château de Crécy is in the village of Saint‐Sulpice, Oise. On 15 August 1901 the baron de Coullongue wrote to Antonin Danloux, the artist’s grandson: ‘Mon cher ami, il semble que les joies de la paternité et la culture de votre joli jardin vous aient fait laisser un peu de côté le catalogue des oeuvres de votre ayeul. Voici pourtant quelques indications qui pourront vous interesser, Dieu veuille qu’elles soient en partie inédites! Je les ai relevés au Château de Crécy où je fus déjeuner, il y a une quinzaine, chez le vieux Colonel Cte. de Chérisey … Elles concernent: 1° peinture huile sur toile, de petit format. Portrait du Bon de Besenval, Colonel Gnl des Régiments Suisses et Grisons. Très joli. Je crois que c’est le portrait gravé qui figure au tête de certaines éditions des Memoires dudit Bon de Besenval. – 2° Portrait au crayon noir de Despréaux, danseur de l’Opéra – 3° Portrait au crayon de mêmes dimensions de la femme dudit Despréaux, laquelle n’était autre que la Célébre Guimart (Antoinette)’ (Archives d’Antonin Danloux – Bibliothèque de l’ INHA , collections Jacques Doucet, archives 123, carton 1.4). The same carton contains an invoice for a photograph of NG 6598 taken at the château de Crécy by one E. Hénocq in November 1906, with his measurements of the painting given as 37 × 46 cm. (Back to text.)

5 The Besenval and Broglie families were connected by the marriage of the sitter’s sister, Theodora, to Charles‐Louis‐Guillaume, marquis de Broglie, and then again some 150 years later when Emeline, the daughter of Jean‐Anatole, vicomte de Dampmartin and of Marie Besenval, herself a descendant of a great uncle of the sitter, married Prince François de Broglie in 1884: see the family tree in Schmid 1912–13. Besides NG 6598, the 1909 sale included miniatures, attributed as French school, of respectively the baron de Besenval and his mistress, the marquise de la Suze (lots 29 and 30). These, unlike lot 4 (NG 6598), were not illustrated in the catalogue. (Back to text.)

6 According to the caption of a photograph of NG 6598 in Broglie 1977, between pp. 128–9. However, Joseph Baillio has advised me that he was ‘pretty sure’ he saw the painting in the salon of Princesse Joseph de Broglie‐Revel, née Marguerite de la Cour de Balleroy (1901–1976) in her avenue Foch apartment a few years before her death (emails of 13 and 19 November 2013). (Back to text.)

7 The entries for the last three exhibitions cited were all by Colin B. Bailey. (Back to text.)

8 See Wintermute 1989, pp. 109 (where illustrated) and 110. I am grateful to Olivier Meslay for informing me that the drawing was once in the collection of Mlles De la Fillolie, and that they also had a preparatory drawing of the full length portrait by Danloux of the marquise de la Suze. (Back to text.)

9 The drawing once in the De Vallière collection is reproduced in Vallière 1940, p. 554. I am grateful to Xavier Salmon for sending me a copy extract from this book, and to Andreas Affolter for information about the drawing in the Museum Schloss Waldegg. (Back to text.)

10 Besenval 1805–7, vol. 3 (1806), pp. 416–17. (Back to text.)

11 Duplessis 1896– ~~1901~~ 1911 , vol. 1 (1901), p. 346. (Back to text.)

12 Louise‐Adelaïde de Pusigneux was the youngest sister of the marquise de La Suze, Besenval’s mistress at the end of his life, as Olivier Meslay has kindly informed me. According to the entry in Danloux’s journal on 25 November 1792, when both he and the marquise de La Suze were in London, the latter told the artist that her sister had decided to leave Brussels with her family to live near her: ‘Les scellés sont apposés sur les effets de Mme. de Pusigneux, mais elle a pu emporter les plus précieux et mettre en lieu sûr son portrait, que je lui ai peint, ainsi que celui du Baron de Besenval: Elle doit les faire venir par la première occasion’ (cited in Portalis 1910, p. 168). It is not absolutely clear from this that the portrait of Besenval referred to was made by Danloux, nor that it was a painting. Ghislain de Diesbach asserts that Mme de La Suze brought a portrait of Besenval by Danloux when she emigrated to London: Besenval 1987 edn, p. 30. If so, then both sisters had a portrait of the baron. (Back to text.)

13 Fiechter 1993, pp. 1 and 7; see ibid. , p. 219 for reference to Besenval’s name as Pierre‐Joseph‐Victor. The account of Besenval’s life is based on this book save where otherwise indicated. Schloss Waldegg was built in 1682–6 as the summer residence of Jean‐Victor I de Besenval (www.schloss‐waldegg.so.ch). In An Aspect of Collecting Taste 1986, p. 50, Bailey states that Besenval’s name was pronounced ‘Bezval’. Walpole used this spelling (Walpole 1937–9, vol. 7 [1939], p. 344) and de Broglie (1977, p. 23, note 1) says that his name was pronounced ‘Bessval, selon l’usage de l’ancienne société’. On the other hand, Saint‐Simon gives an alternative name for him, presumably based on then current pronunciation, of Beuzeval: Saint‐Simon 1963–9 edn, vol. 2, p. 652. References to him by both Gouverneur Morris, who knew him well, and Wolzogen (respectively cited in notes 47 and 179 below) suggest that his name was pronounced with three syllables. (Back to text.)

14 For the dates of Jean‐Victor’s military appointments, see Fuhring 1999, vol. 2, p. 452. The principal function of the Swiss Guards was to act as external guards of the royal palace. (Back to text.)

15 The lands at Brunstatt were made a barony by Louis XV in 1726: Schmid 1912–13, p. 618. There is a bust‐length portrait drawing by Juste‐Aurèle Meissonnier of Jean‐Victor de Besenval dated about 1726–9 (23 × 17 cm, black and white chalk and graphite on paper) at Waddesdon Manor (Rothschild Collection, inv. 1360): J. Carey 2007, no. 51. For Claude Drevet’s engraving after Meissonnier’s drawing see Fuhring 1999, vol. 2, no. G 124, p. 452 for a summary account of the life of Jean‐Victor de Besenval, and p. 453 for that of his wife. (Back to text.)

16 I am grateful to Joseph Baillio for sending me photographs of and information on Largillierre’s portraits. They were sold as a pair at Sotheby’s, New York, 30 January 2014 (lot 117, $125,000) to Eric Coatelem, Paris, who included them in his catalogue (Coatelem 2015, pp. 112–17). Another, smaller, portrait of the baronne de Besenval was listed in Pascal 1928, no. 26 (oil on canvas, 79 × 63 cm) as then in the collection of the comte de Besenval. A pair of head‐and‐shoulders oval portraits of Pierre‐Victor’s parents executed in 1734 by Louis Tocqué is in the Ciechanowiecki Foundation, Royal Castle, Warsaw (Bialonowska 2012, p. 223 and pls 76, 77). I am grateful to Alastair Laing for this last reference. (Back to text.)

17 See Book VII of Jean‐Jacques Rousseau’s Les Confessions (2011 edn, p. 336). (Back to text.)

18 Fiechter 1993, p.12. (Back to text.)

19 Théodora became marquise de Broglie on her marriage in 1733 to Charles‐Louis‐Guillaume de Broglie. She died in 1777. A half‐length portrait of her by Nattier as the marquise de Broglie was exhibited at the Exposition Universelle, Paris, in 1878 (no. 463). (Back to text.)

20 Schmid 1912–13, p. 621. (Back to text.)

21 I am grateful to Stefan Blank for confirming that the Belle portrait is in the former summerhouse of the Besenval family, Schloss Waldegg in Feldbrunnen near Solothurn (email of 9 September 2005). As well as the likenesses of Besenval referred to in the text of this entry, the following two‐dimensional likenesses are recorded: [page 136]

(1) An anonymous portrait of Besenval as a child with his sister and an attendant, about 1730, oil on canvas, in Schloss Waldegg and reproduced in Fiechter 1993, pl. 11.
(2) An aquatint, profile facing left in a round medallion with the legend ‘Mr. le Baron de Besenval / Lieutenant Général des Armées du Roi’ ( BN , Est , N2 – fol. Portraits. Bertron à Besnard, vol. 156). The earliest possible date for this print is July 1763, when, according to Hozier (1817–18, vol. 2 [1818], p. 443), Besenval was appointed to the rank of Lieutenant‐General. The print may be related to the anonymous aquatint, also a profile facing left in a round medallion, recorded by Duplessis 1896– ~~1901~~ 1911 , vol. 1 (1901), p. 346, no. 4487‐1.
(3) A pastel portrait by Liotard signed and dated 1746 said to be of Besenval (Roethlisberger and Loche 2008, no. 148 and fig. 249). It is now in a Geneva collection: email of 10 October 2008 from Marcel Roethlisberger, who considers that the portrait is of Besenval, but the identification is not free from doubt so far as this cataloguer is concerned. In NG 6598 the sitter’s nose is more pointed, the lips thinner and the jawline stronger.
(4) Completely unlike Besenval, a caricature of him at the left of a scatological print of June 1790, Ma Finte pour ce coup cy, ils n’en reviendrons jamais (‘My shit for this ’ere job, they’ll never get out of it’).
(5) The Swiss embassy in Paris has an oval painted head and shoulders of Besenval (there attributed to Greuze), which to judge from the sitter’s age probably dates to about 1790. There is a photograph of it in Broglie 1977, and in Dardel 2013, p. 59.
(6) Lot 29 of the 1909 Chériséy sale (for which see under Provenance) included a miniature: ‘École française. Portrait du baron de Bezenval, lieutenant‐colonel des Gardes suisses. De sa main droite appuyée sur un guéridon, il tient une miniature, celle de sa bien‐aimée, qu’il fixe avec tendresse. Il est assis dans un canapé et porte son uniforme gris décoré d’une croix qui, entr’ouvert, découvre sur le gilet blanc une écharpe rouge. Forme ovale. Haut., 5 cent.; larg., 6 cent. ½.’ According to family tradition the miniature that Besenval is shown holding was a portrait of the marquise de la Suze: Besenval 1927 edn, p. xiv.
(7) A printed caricature in the Rothschild Collection, Waddesdon Manor (inv. 4232.3.29.47), by an unknown maker and with the inscription ‘M. le Baron tournant le dos a M.le Colonel / est chagrin de la journée du 12 juillet 1789’, said probably to represent the baron de Besenval.
(8) A pen and brown ink drawing by Pier Leone Ghezzi sold at Sotheby’s (10 December 1979, lot 120, sold £450) and inscribed on the verso ‘Mr le Baron de Besenval’ was identified in the sale catalogue as a caricature of Pierre‐Victor de Besenval. However, given the apparent age of the subject, and the fact that, as the sale catalogue itself states, an identical caricature by Ghezzi is dated 14 December 1728 (when Pierre‐Victor was only seven years old), the caricature in question must be of his father, Jean‐Victor.

(Back to text.)

22 In 1734 Belle also painted full‐length portraits of Besenval’s sister and mother. All three were offered at Sotheby’s, Monaco, 22 February 1986, lots 277, 278 and 279, and are now at Schloss Waldegg. For portraits of Théodora made by Nattier in 1742, see Salmon 1999b, pp. 148–51. (Back to text.)

23 Besenval’s progression in the army and in the Order of Saint Louis were: 1731, Cadet; January 1733, Supernumerary Ensign; November 1736, Ensign in the regiment of Dettins; April 1738, Captain; March 1744, Chevalier de Saint Louis; March 1747, Infantry Brigadier; May 1758, Field‐Marshal; 1761, Commander of the Order of Saint Louis; March 1762, Inspector General of the Swiss Guards and Regiment of Grisons; July 1763, Lieutenant‐General of the King’s Armies; 1 January 1766, Grand Croix of the Order of Saint Louis; 1781, Commander‐in‐Chief of the provinces of Champagne, Brie, the Bourbonnais, Berri, Touraine and the Orléanais: Hozier 1817–18, vol. 2 (1818), p. 443, and Fiechter 1993, pp. 27–8. (Back to text.)

24 See note 19. (Back to text.)

25 Fiechter 1993, pp. 27–8. He was made a chevalier of the Order in March 1744, but the citation referred to the action at Sahay two years previously. His commanding officers had noted his ‘desire to learn the art of war and to excel in it’ ( AN , Archives de la Guerre, Dossier Besenval, cited by Colin Bailey in An Aspect of Collecting Taste 1986, p. 50). (Back to text.)

26 The original, presumably the signed and dated picture once in the collection of the comte de Besenval (Jouin 1879, p. 99) was in the collection of Prince François de Broglie in 1910 (Nolhac 1925, p. 275) and in the de Broglie sale, Paris, 1977. In 1991 it was recorded as in a Swiss private collection: Carlen 1991, p. 156, note 10. There is a copy in the Hermitage (Nemilova 1986, p. 231, and X. Salmon 1999b, p. 6, fig. 10 and p. 7). The Hermitage painting is a replica, according to Renard 1999, p. 85. However, Xavier Salmon has kindly advised me that although the Hermitage painting is of good quality, being neither signed nor dated it cannot be regarded as the original; that the version at the Swiss embassy in Paris is also a copy; and that of the copies in other private collections of which he is aware, none is the original. Three copies are at Museum Schloss Waldegg, near Solothurn: one of these is contemporary; one is from about 1790, on loan from a private collection; and the third is a nineteenth‐century copy by Gaudenz Taverna (email from Stefan Blank, 9 September 2005). (Back to text.)

27 Fiechter 1993, p. 43. (Back to text.)

28 Wrongly dated to probably 1761 in Gruyer 1902, no. 122, on the erroneous basis that that was the year in which Besenval was awarded the cross of Saint Louis, which he is shown wearing here. Carmontelle also made a print of the composition in the same direction as his drawing (example in the British Museum, inv. 1894, 0122.68). (Back to text.)

29 Fiechter 1993, p. 46. Besenval had to wait only a month before the death of an existing Commander of the Order enabled him to take the vacant place. (Back to text.)

30 His son, Joseph‐Alexandre, wrote of him: ‘Parmi tant de qualités que possédait M. de Besenval, il en est une, si toutefois elle peut porter ce nom, que j’ai voulu nommer la dernière; c’est le bonheur dont il jouit constamment’ (cited in Broglie 1977, pp. 140–1). (Back to text.)

31 Fiechter 1993, p. 48. (Back to text.)

32 Ibid. , pp. 53, 56. (Back to text.)

33 When Besenval bought the hôtel Chanac de Pompadour in December 1767, the sale document described him as ‘Lieutenant‐général des armées du Roy & lieutenant‐général du régiment des Gardes suisses’. Contet 1910, pp. 4–5 and pls 9–18. (Back to text.)

34 Fiechter 1993, p. 91. (Back to text.)

35 Ibid. pp. 90–1. (Back to text.)

36 Besenval 1987 edn, pp. 324ff. (Back to text.)

37 Bombelles 1977–2013, vol. 1 (1977), p. 63. For a similar comment made anonymously see Lescure 1866, vol. 1, p. 362. Lescure notes that this correspondence for the period until 1784 has been attributed to Jean‐Louis Favier, an official in the Foreign Ministry, and then to M. du Bucq, an official at the Navy Ministry. (Back to text.)

38 Fiechter 1993, p. 91, citing Besenval 1805–7, vol. 2, p. 101, and Besenval 1987 edn, p. 332 (‘C’est un moyen de succès infaillible, que de laisser la gloire et l’espérance du profit à ceux qui en ont le plus de désir. / On atteint toujours le but, lorsqu’on a l’art d’y faire tendre l’intérêt des agents consommés dans l’intrigue, qu’on emploie; et dans ce cas, avoir l’air de n’être pour rien dans l’opération, est la conduite la plus efficace qu’on puisse tenir’). Besenval’s self‐assessment was confirmed by Auguste‐Raymond de la Marck, who wrote that Besenval did not wish to be a minister and that his highest ambition was to succeed as colonel of the Swiss Guards after the death of the comte d’Affry, but ‘tout en ne se souciant pas d’être ministre, il voulait se mêler d’en faire, afin d’avoir sur eux beaucoup d’influence. En tout il s’amusait de l’intrigue’ (Bacourt 1851, vol. 1, p. 27). (Back to text.)

39 Probably around 1741–2, when Besenval was with his regiment in Douai and Lille and Clairon was touring Lille, Dunkirk and Ghent, and when she was the subject of a libellous book, Gaillard de la Bataille 1741–3. The liaison is dated around 1742 by Jacques Jaubert (2003, pp. 25–9). For representations of Mlle Clairon by Carle Vanloo some 15 years after this, see Sahut 1977, nos 165, 166, 168, 169 and 366. Among other portraits of Mlle Clairon are a marble bust by Jean‐Baptiste II Lemoyne of her in the role of Melpomene invoking Apollo, in the collection of the Comédie française, Paris (La Comédie‐Française s’expose 2011, cat. 103, pl. p. 103); a profile engraving by Daniel Berger after a drawing by Cochin; and a painting by Jean‐Baptiste Le Prince of her as Idamé in Voltaire’s tragedy L’Orphelin de la Chine in the collection of the Institut et Musée Voltaire, Geneva: see La Gazette des Délices, 9, spring 2006. However, the identification of the sitter in the Le Prince portrait is open to doubt, as François Jacob has kindly confirmed (email of 10 October 2008). For a derivative portrait of Mlle Clairon see Bailey 2007, no. 75 (entry by Pierre Rosenberg). (Back to text.)

40 Goncourt 1890, pp. 44–5 (‘I have more pleasure now being faithful to you, even when you don’t want it, than I ever used to have being unfaithful’). In the same letter Clairon writes that she expects soon to be in Paris, where she was to make her debut at the Comédie française in September 1743 in the part of Phèdre. The letter to Besenval was probably written therefore about 1742–3. (Back to text.)

41 Ibid. , p. 46 (‘Kiss‐arse’ or ‘Arselicker’). Baisecul is the name of a loquacious, nonsense‐speaking character in Rabelais’s Pantagruel, but it may be supposed that Clairon was calling her one‐time lover an arselicker rather than making a literary reference. (Back to text.)

42 Fiechter 1993, p. 34. (Back to text.)

43 Ibid. , p. 33. Philippe‐Henri, marquis de Ségur, was portrayed by Vigée Le Brun in 1789 (collection of the baron de Villeneuve, château des Roches [Indres]; replica at Versailles, Musée du château, inv. MV 5781; RF 2202). [page 137]A marble bust of the marquise de Ségur by Martin‐Claude Monot was exhibited at the 1769 Salon: Rosenthal 2007, no. 29 (entry by Guilhem Scherf). On Carmontelle’s portrait of the marquise de Ségur, see Salmon 2001, no. 73, p. 144. (Back to text.)

44 For the notoriety of Joseph‐Alexandre’s true paternity see, for example, Morris 1939, vol. 1, p. 22. Besenval’s will of 20 December 1784 and codicil of 1 July 1790 left his hôtel and possessions (other than what he had inherited, which he left to his family in Switzerland) to Philippe‐Henri de Ségur for life, with remainder to Joseph‐Alexandre: Broglie 1977, p. 141. Joseph‐Alexandre was to become an ardent royalist, collaborating in two royalist newspapers, Actes des Apôtres, which first appeared in November 1790, and La Feuille du jour, the first issue of which appeared the following month and whose editorial office was at the hôtel de Besenval: Broglie 1977, p. 144. One might suppose that, in order not to endanger Besenval, he did not support the royalist cause so publicly until after Besenval’s death. For a brief account of Joseph‐Alexandre’s military and literary careers, see Dictionnaire historique 1832–5, vol. 12 (1833), pp. 243–4.

For this drawing (fig. 6) and that of the marquise de Ségur, both by Louis Carrogis, known as Carmontelle, see Salmon 2001, nos 73 and 74. Philippe‐Angélique de Froissy was the natural daughter of the Regent by an actress, La Desmares. She married Henri‐François, comte de Ségur; Philippe‐Henri, marquis de Ségur, was their son. (Back to text.)

45 See Le Chatelier [1906], p. 153. The bust of Besenval, which was by Claude‐André Deseine and exhibited in 1782, was in plaster. Claude‐André also made a bust of him in terracotta, signed and dated 1782, which was in the collection of the prince de Broglie in 1888 ( ibid. , p. 153, note 1), with the Heim Gallery, London, in 1982, and in a Swiss private collection in 1989 (letter of 2 November 1989 from Andrew Ciechonowiecki to Alastair Laing in the Heim Papers, Box 66, Getty Research Institute, said there to have been sold to a Swiss private collector ‘some years ago’). It is probably one of these busts that is shown in the background of Danloux’s portrait of the marquise de la Suze. (Back to text.)

46 Besenval had his own bedroom at Romainville: AN , Y‐13319‐B. The château de Romainville was built in 1630 and acquired by Philippe‐Henri’s father, Henri‐François de Ségur, in 1723. Philippe‐Henri lived there until the French Revolution. One of the overdoors was painted by Vigée Le Brun and other decorations were undertaken by Hubert Robert. Until recently only one wing of the chateau remained and was in a poor state. The building was recently demolished. An oval snuffbox made in 1781–3 for the marquis de Ségur by Pierre‐François Drais, incorporating six miniatures by Henri‐Joseph van Blarenberghe, signed and dated 1782, with views of the chateau and its gardens, is in the Wallace Collection, London (inv. 1782): Duffy and Vogtherr 2010, pp. 63–5. Rosalind Savill kindly drew my attention to the article by Alfred Marie (Marie 1951). It was the marquis de Ségur who commissioned the architect Brongniart to draw up the plans for a new church at Romainville, begun in 1785 and inaugurated two years later, as well as for other works at the chateau, in connection with which numerous drawings by the architect survive in the Louvre, département des Arts graphiques. For Brongniart’s work for Besenval a few years earlier, see under ‘Besenval as a patron of the fine arts’ above. For further information about Brongniart in this volume, see the entry for Vigée Le Brun’s Mlle Brongniart (NG 5871). (Back to text.)

47 Morris 1939, vol. 1, pp. 84–5 (21 May 1789). (Back to text.)

48 Marie 1951. For a plan and other views of Romainville, see Le Rouge 1978 facsimile, vol. 3, pl. 1 of cahier IX, pl. 11 of cahier X and pl. 10 of cahier XII. The series of engravings by Le Rouge, who was Ingénieur Géographe du Roi, was published in 21 cahiers during the years 1776–87. The ninth cahier, which contained Besenval’s designs, was published in 1781 and dedicated to the marquis de Ségur. (Back to text.)

49 For the sale of paintings by Breughel by the marquis de Ségur, see Broglie 1977, p. 141. (Back to text.)

50 Broglie 1977, p. 141. In his will dated 20 December 1784 Besenval left the reversion to the vicomte de Ségur. (Back to text.)

51 Besenval 1987 edn, pp. 43–5. (Back to text.)

52 Another portrait of the marquise de La Suze signed by Danloux, black, white and red chalks with white gouache, oval, 19 × 15.5 cm, was sold by Audap‐Mirabaud, Paris, 28 March 2012 (lot 29, €4,588, there catalogued as ‘Portrait d’homme [sic] de profil vers la droite’). For the dates of the marquise de La Suze, see Brotonne 1974, p. 152. (Back to text.)

53 For two other portraits of the marquise de La Suze, both by Danloux, see Portalis 1910, ill. facing p. 166 (whereabouts unknown), and on p. 168. (Back to text.)

54 Archives parlementaires, 1862–, vol. 13, p. 557. The reference is included in a long list of pensioners on the French state entitled ‘État nominative des pensions sur le trésor royal imprimé par ordre de l’Assemblée nationale en 1789’ published in 1790. Since Besenval did not die until 1791, the reference in this publication to Mme Yoc de Sury as ‘Veuve de M. de Besenval, Baron de Bronstatt’ is puzzling. (Back to text.)

55 On Besenval’s frequent visits to Chanteloup in the period 1771–5, see Correspondance complete de Mme du Deffand 1867, passim. On the château de Chanteloup see Moreau 2007. This publication contains Patrick Michel’s analysis of the Choiseul collection, which, as he points out (pp. 213–23), consisted of mainly Dutch and Flemish pictures, albeit along with some major seventeenth‐ and eighteenth‐century French paintings. (Back to text.)

56 The comte d’Artois would later become Charles X of France (1824–30). (Back to text.)

57 Souvenirs‐Portraits de Gaston de Lévis 1993 edn, p. 159. (Back to text.)

58 In a letter of 13 July 1775, Marie‐Antoinette wrote to the comte de Rosenberg: ‘Je vous présenterais un homme [Besenval] avec qui j’ai fait connaissance depuis votre départ et en qui j’ai grande confiance.’ Lettres de Marie‐Antoinette 1895–6 edn, vol. 1 (1895), p. 96. Earlier in the year Besenval had been among a handful of courtiers invited to the weekly informal concerts organised on Mondays by the queen, at which she and other ladies of the court sang: ibid. , p. 88 (letter of 17 April 1775). (Back to text.)

59 Souvenirs‐Portraits de Gaston de Lévis 1993 edn, p. 159. (Back to text.)

60 Correspondance secrète 1875, vol. 2, pp. 382–3 (letter of 5 October 1775 from Maria Theresa to Mercy‐Argentau, her ambassador in Paris). (Back to text.)

61 One contemporary claimed that Besenval was, without knowing it, in love with the queen: Ligne 1989, p. 282. This seems unlikely, given Besenval’s harsh view of her (Besenval 1987 edn, pp. 460–2). (Back to text.)

62 ~~Correspondence~~ Correspondance secrète 1875, vol. 2, pp. 420, 436. (Back to text.)

63 On this episode see Fiechter 1993, pp. 71–2 and Besenval 1805–7, vol. 2, pp. 99–100, Besenval 1987 edn, p. 179. Madame de Campan, Marie‐Antoinette’s première femme de chambre, claimed that the queen told her that during one of her tête‐à‐têtes with Besenval he had thrown himself at her knees, but that she had dismissed him curtly. This story, told long after the alleged event, has been doubted, probably rightly: Fiechter 1993, pp. 86–7. See also Besenval 1987 edn, pp. 268ff. (Back to text.)

64 On the comte de Vaudreuil see the entry on Drouais’s portrait of him (NG 4253) in the present volume. (Back to text.)

65 Gabrielle‐Yolande‐Claude‐Martine de Polastron, duchesse de Polignac. She was portrayed by Vigée Le Brun on more than one occasion. (Back to text.)

66 Marc Marie, marquis de Bombelles, French diplomat. (Back to text.)

67 Bombelles 1977–2013 edn, vol. 1 (1977), p. 244 (entry for 6 October 1788). (Back to text.)

68 Besenval was also among the few being admitted to the queen’s rooms during 1784: Musée de l’histoire de France, série armoire de fer et Musée, côte AE/1/6/6 (‘Liste des personnes que la Reine voit dans des cas particuliers pour l’année 1784’). (Back to text.)

69 See Arizzoli‐Clémentel and Salmon 2008, no. 214 (entry by Xavier Salmon). (Back to text.)

70 See note 101. (Back to text.)

71 Burkard 1989, p. 330 (9 June 1784: ‘Il n’a aucune instruction, n’ayant jamais voulu étudier; cependant il est fin, il est diplomate, il voit mieux que personne et raconte très‐bien.’). (Back to text.)

72 Ibid. (diary entry 9 June 1784: ‘un esprit et une grâce sans culture qui rendent le baron un personnage tout à fait à part.’). Besenval’s friend the prince de Ligne said that ‘sa mine franche et belle lui faisait risquer des insolences qui lui allaient à merveille’ (Ligne 2001 edn, p. 88). (Back to text.)

73 Bombelles 1977–2013, vol. 3, p. 34. (Back to text.)

74 Allonville 1838– 5 45 , vol. 1 (1838), p. 69. (Back to text.)

75 Guignard 1931, p. 65. (Back to text.)

76 ‘… il joignait à l’intrépidité qui de tous temps a caractérisé sa nation ce feu de valeur qui paraît appartenir à la nôtre; il avait une belle taille, une figure agréable, de l’esprit, de l’audace: que faut‐il de plus pour réussir? Aussi avait‐il eu beaucoup de succès auprès des femmes. Cependant ses manières avec elles étaient trop libres, et sa galanterie était de mauvais ton; même entre hommes, sa conversation était plus cynique que piquante, et sa gaieté plus railleuse qu’enjouée’ (Souvenirs‐Portraits de Gaston de Lévis 1993 edn, pp. 158–9). (Back to text.)

77 Tourneux 1877–82, vol. 13 (1880), p. 532 (May 1784, ‘A voir cette humeur severe / Et ce faux air de vertu, / On croirait, par ma foi, ma chère, / Que c’est vous qui m’avez f[outu]’). (Back to text.)

78 He sent the manuscript of his novel Spleen to Crébillon for comment, and he was also a friend of the dramatist Charles Collé, with whom he co‐wrote La verité dans la vie: Fiechter 1993, p. 59. (Back to text.)

[page 138]

79 Besenval 1987 edn, p. 17. (Back to text.)

80 Besenval 1927 edn, p. 9. Besenval’s stories were first published in 1806 in Besenval 1805–7, vol. 4 (1806). (Back to text.)

81 Besenval 1927 edn, pp. 91–2. (Back to text.)

82 Besenval 1805–7, vol. 2, pp. 162–3. (Back to text.)

83 Besenval 1987 edn, p. 26. (Back to text.)

84 Fiechter 1993, p. 104. (Back to text.)

85 Besenval 1805–7, vol. 3, pp. 114–15. (Back to text.)

86 Louis‐Auguste Augustin, comte d’Affry. In addition to his military career he was the French ambassador to the Estates‐General of Holland, and while at The Hague bought Rembrandt’s Man in a Golden Helmet: Besenval 1987 edn, p. 529, note 69. (Back to text.)

87 Besenval 1805–7, vol. 3, pp. 384ff. (Back to text.)

88 Price 2003, pp. 76–7. (Back to text.)

89 See Besenval 1805–7, vol. 3, pp. 412ff.; Fiechter 1993, pp. 138ff., and Czouz‐Tornare 1989, p. 242. (Back to text.)

90 Spagnoli 1991, p. 496. Recently it has been argued that Besenval did no more than carry out the orders of moderation given by the king and the duc de Broglie, and that he abstained from becoming more closely involved in the disturbances so as not to compromise Franco‐Swiss relations in the long term: Maradan and Andrey 2006. (Back to text.)

91 ‘M. de Launay tiendra jusqu’à la dernière extrémité; je lui ai envoyé des forces suffisantes.’ The document is in the Archives nationales, Paris ( AN , C 35, no. 298 5), but was published in Mémoires de Bailly 1821, p. 383. (Back to text.)

92 Besenval 1805–7, vol. 3, pp. 416–17. (Back to text.)

93 Feuillet de Conches 1864–73, vol. 1 (1864), p. 460. Other members of Marie‐Antoinette’s circle who joined this first wave of (attempted) emigration included the duchesse de Polignac and the comte de Vaudreuil. (Back to text.)

94 The Maréchaussée was an armed gendarmerie that operated in the countryside. (Back to text.)

95 Besenval 1805–7, vol. 3, pp. 420–2. (Back to text.)

96 Czouz‐Tornare 1989, p. 245, although the contemporary publication Révolutions de Paris dédiées à la nation et au District des Petits‐Augustins, Paris n.d., gives the date as 28 July. (Back to text.)

97 Necker’s speech was published as Discours Prononcé le 30 juillet 1789, à l’Hôtel‐de‐Ville, par M.Necker, Directeur general des Finances, à l’Assemblée des Représentants des Districts, et à l’Assemblée générale des Électeurs, Paris 1789 ( BL , F.54[2]). (Back to text.)

98 Harris 1986, p. 599, according to which Besenval had no appreciation of the need to establish public control over the royal finances. (Back to text.)

99 Gazette Nationale, ou le Moniteur Universel, 30, 31 July 1789. (Back to text.)

100 Besenval 1805–7, vol. 2, p. 372, and vol. 3, p. 424, where Besenval acknowledges that Necker saved his life. See also the graphic supposition on Besenval’s fate in Gazette Nationale, ou le Moniteur Universel, op. cit. , and Lescure 1866, vol. 2, p. 385 (16 September 1789), where the writer refers to the wish by officialdom to transport Besenval from Brie‐Comte‐Robert to Paris, ‘mais on craint à son sujet la fougue d’une populace encore très‐inflammablé’. Lescure attributes this anonymous correspondence at this date to M.du Bucq, a senior official at the Ministry of the Marine. (Back to text.)

101 Already in 1787 the Austrian ambassador was reporting: ‘… ce n’est pas la personne de la Reine qui excite l’animadversion [en Paris]; il n’y a que les alentours favoris de cette princesse qui aient attiré sur Elle‐même cette malveillance générale. A la vérité, ces alentours se sont conduits de manière à révolter par leurs rapines et par l’abus qu’ils ont fait de leur credit.’ Correspondance secrète 1889–91, vol. 2 (1891), p. 123 (15 September 1787). (Back to text.)

102 For a detailed account of Besenval’s imprisonment at Brie‐Comte‐Robert see Les Amis du Vieux Château de Brie‐Comte‐Robert 1986 ( BN , 8‐LN27‐75609). (Back to text.)

103 Lescure 1866, vol. 2, p. 404. (Back to text.)

104 On mob hatred of Besenval see Bombelles 1977–2013, vol. 3, pp. 56–7 and p. 60, where Bombelles writes: ‘… il faut toujours avoir sur pied non des gardes, mais des bataillons pour empêcher le malheureux baron de Besenval d’être massacré par le peuple. Le seul espoir qui reste, c’est que la garde nationale continue à faire assez bien son devoir et que la rage de ce cruel peuple sera bientôt assouvie par la mort de M.Favras.’ Mob hatred of Besenval continued throughout his imprisonment. On 12 January 1790 the queen’s sister‐in‐law, Mme Elisabeth, wrote to Mme de Bombelles: ‘La fureur contre le baron de Besenval augmente; on a menacé un juge, l’autre jour, de la lanterne, s’il ne le condamnoit pas. Je ne prévois pas comment tout cela finira.’ Feuillet de Conches 1864–73, vol. 3, p. 231. (Back to text.)

105 Lescure 1866, vol. 2, p. 407. (Back to text.)

106 For example in Lettre d’un citoyen de Paris 1789, p. 11. (Back to text.)

107 The point was made more philosophically, and perhaps with an eye not just to Besenval’s case but to possible future developments, in the Gazette Nationale, ou le Moniteur Universel, 88, 10 November 1789, which asked at what point exactly following orders became a crime in the midst of the uncertainty of opinions and ideas, an uncertainty that was inevitable at the point of time of such a sudden revolution. (Back to text.)

108 Fiechter 1993, p. 172. According to Thomas Jefferson, however, Besenval was unpopular with his troops ‘on account of oppressions’, and an earlier deputation had demanded ‘justice to be done to him’ and ‘[avowed] the devotion of the Swiss troops to the cause of the nation’ (letter of 5 August 1789 from Jefferson in Paris to John Jay, Jefferson 1830, vol. 3). The extreme hostility of some Swiss troops to Besenval is also recounted in Prudhomme 1789, no. IV, p. 2 (2–8 August 1789). (Back to text.)

109 Fiechter 1993, p. 167. (Back to text.)

110 For Sèze’s outline arguments on points of procedure and substance concerning Besenval’s trial, see his Observations pour le Baron de Bezenval sur le rapport fait au Comité des Recherches des Représentans de la Commune par M.Garran de Coulon, Paris 1790 (copy in BL , F.43[5]). (Back to text.)

111 The painting was pre‐empted at auction by the Louvre on 16 November 2012 for €275,000 (inc. expenses), Paris, Brissonneau Daguerre, 16 November 2012, lot 61. See also Faroult and Voinot 2016, no. 126 (entry by Guillaume Faroult). (Back to text.)

112 Tuetey 1890–1911, vol. 1, p. 124. (Back to text.)

113 Shapiro 1992, p. 658. (Back to text.)

114 Morris 1939, vol. 1, pp. 354–5. (Back to text.)

115 See Les pamphlets de Marat 1911 edn, pp. 121 and 142, note 1. Eighteen months later, and so after his death, Besenval’s name was among those Marat would use to incite fear of counter‐revolution in ‘C’en est fait de nous’ (26 July 1790), ibid. , p. 207. (Back to text.)

116 Tourzel 1883, vol. 1, pp. 49–50: ‘La fermeté et le sang‐froid de M. de Besenval ne se démentirent pas un instant pendant tout le cours de ce process.’ (Back to text.)

117 Lescure 1866, vol. 2, p. 417: ‘Il faut une victime au people; le premier en servira, et l’on ne doute plus de ses projets criminals’ (23 January 1790). For a drawn portrait by David that is probably of the marquis de Favras, see Rosenberg and Prat 2002, no. 100. Favras was executed on 19 February 1790. (Back to text.)

118 Shapiro 1992, pp. 667–8. (Back to text.)

119 Fiechter 1993, p. 172. Czouz‐Tornare 1989, p. 245, gives the date as 31 January 1790, and Morris 1939 as 29 January 1790. (Back to text.)

120 The duchesse de Tourzel became governess of the royal children on 26 July 1789, following the emigration of the duchesse de Polignac. For the passage cited in translation and Mme de Tourzel’s account of Besenval’s arrest, trial and release, see Tourzel 1883, pp. 48–51. (Back to text.)

121 Lescure 1866, vol. 2, pp. 424 (16 February 1790) and 531 (11 June 1791). (Back to text.)

122 Morris 1939, vol. 1, p. 303 and vol. 2, pp. 57, 185–6. (Back to text.)

123 Lescure 1866, vol. 2, pp. 424 (16 February 1790) and 531 (11 June 1791). (Back to text.)

124 [Sèze] 1790 ( BL , F. 538[1]). For the charges against Besenval see [Garran de Coulon] 1790 ( BL , F.1030[1]). (Back to text.)

125 Fiechter 1993, p.195. DBF, vol. 6 (1954), p. 310, wrongly gives Besenval’s date of death as 1794; the correct date, June 1791, is confirmed by the minutes of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture: PV , vol. 10, p. 112. (Back to text.)

126 Molière’s plays were frequently republished in France during the course of the eighteenth century, including in the years 1784, 1787, 1788 and 1791–4. This makes it more likely that Besenval’s reference to the ghost of the Commander was to Molière’s play than, as suggested in An Aspect of Collecting Taste 1986, p. 48, note 1, and Wintermute 1989, p. 110, note 2, to the now much better‐known Da Ponte/Mozart opera, Don Giovanni. In addition, the 1788 edition included a print of the ghost of the Commander appearing to Don Juan by Jacques‐Philippe Le Bas, engraved in 1770 after a drawing by Jean‐Michel Moreau the Younger: Bret 1788, vol. 3, facing p. 221. Although Molière’s Dom [sic] Juan was frequently re‐published, it seems that throughout the eighteenth century and until 1847 it was not staged in Paris other than in its adaptation by Thomas Corneille of 1677 (www.cesar.org.uk/cesar2/titles/titles.php?fct=edit&script_UOID=169296). It is possible that Besenval’s reference was not to Molière’s play at all, since there were plays by other authors entitled ‘Don Juan’ and/or ‘Le Festin de Pierre’. In this connection it should be noted that during the month immediately preceding Besenval’s death there were five performances of a piece called ‘Le Festin de pierre de la foire’ (author unknown) at the Théâtre des Grands Danseurs, Paris: (www.cesar.org.uk/cesar2/dates/dates.php?fct=edit&performance_UOID=266441). At all events, Mozart’s opera was not performed [page 139]in Paris until 1805, and then in a mutilated version (The Musical Times, 1 October 1887, p.594), having received its first performances in Prague (1787) and Vienna (1788). Mozart’s music, on the other hand, was well known in Paris – a theme in the first movement of his Piano Concerto no. 25 composed in 1786 is said to have inspired La Marseillaise – and given the strong links between Vienna and Paris at this time, Besenval and his circle might have been aware that Mozart had recently composed an opera based on the Don Juan story.

According to the manuscript catalogue of Carmontelle’s drawings at Chantilly written by Lédans in or after 1807, Besenval died after finishing a game of backgammon: Gruyer 1902, p. 91. (Back to text.)

127 Mme Elisabeth wrote to a friend on 3 November 1790: ‘[Le curé] étoit tout occupé du salut du baron de Besenval qui se mouroit. Il est hors d’affaire pour cette fois‐ci. Il faut demander qu’il mette à profit sa convalescence.’ (Feuillet de Conches 1864–73, vol. 1, p. 363. On the end of Besenval’s life, see Lescure 1866, vol. 2, pp. 531–2. (Back to text.)

128 Morris 1939, vol. 2, p. 216, noted: ‘It is according to Parisian Manners equivalent to the loss of a Husband in America.’ (Back to text.)

129 See under ‘Early life and military career to 1789’, above. Other recorded family portraits are a portrait of Besenval’s father, Jean‐Victor, in armour by Constantin Netscher; a bronze bust of him dated 1735 by Jacques Caffieri; and a portrait of Besenval’s mother and sister by Rigaud: Jouin 1879, pp. 98–100. (Back to text.)

130 www.schloss‐waldegg.ch/de/gartensaal.html. (Back to text.)

131 Fuhring 1999, vol. 1, p. 40, and vol. 2, nos O 43 and G 94. For a summary of Meissonnier’s work for Jean‐Victor de Besenval and his wife, Catherine Bielinska, and their circle see ibid. , vol. 1, pp. 40–1. See Le faubourg Saint‐Germain 1980, pp. 24–7 (entry by Bruno Pons). (Back to text.)

132 Fuhring 1999, vol. 1, p. 41 and passim, and vol. 2, no. O 58. For information on Meissonnier’s (unexecuted) design for the façade of Saint‐Sulpice in the collection at Waddesdon Manor (inv. 2129), consult its website (www.waddesdon.org.uk). (Back to text.)

133 See Exposition de cent pastels du XVIIIe siècle 1908, nos 120 and 121, both recorded as then in the collection of prince François de Broglie, and see Watson 1966, p. 564. More recently each of these bronze busts has been catalogued in a private collection (not necessarily the same one): Navarra‐Le Bihan 2005, vol. 1, p. 20. (Back to text.)

134 I am grateful to Cyrille Sciama for confirming that the location of this painting is unknown: email of 7 November 2008. (Back to text.)

135 PV , vol. 7, p. 134. Nattier’s autograph replica portrait of the marquise de Broglie in oriental costume is in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (inv. NM 1142): Grate 1994, pp. 211–12, where Grate notes that Alexis‐Simon Belle portrayed the marquise in 1734 in connection with her marriage. This was the same year in which Belle portrayed Besenval aged 12 (see above). (Back to text.)

136 On this episode, see [Jeffares] 2011, pp. 129–31; on l’abbé Pommyer’s portrait by Maurice‐Quentin de La Tour in a London private collection, ibid. , pp. 119ff. (Back to text.)

137 PV , vol. 8, pp. 6–7. (Back to text.)

138 Ibid. , vol. 9, pp. 186–8. Possibly Besenval’s promotion was influenced by his activities as amateur architect at the château de Romainville, for which see p. 123, above. (Back to text.)

139 See Leclair 2008, p. 70. (Back to text.)

140 Leclair 2006. The Chevalier de Damery also collected paintings during part of his military career, although it is unclear how much active service he saw: McAllister Johnson and Mayer 2009. (Back to text.)

141 Guy Guérapin de Vauréal, died 1760. (Back to text.)

142 The building, considerably altered since Besenval’s occupancy, is at 142 rue de Grenelle, Paris 7, and now houses the Swiss embassy. At the end of the Ancien Régime it was numbered 120 rue de Grenelle: Etat actuel de Paris 1788, p. 22. The additional upper floor that now exists at the property was added only after 1862: Le faubourg Saint‐Germain 1980, p. 25. (Back to text.)

143 Fiechter 1993, p. 93; Le faubourg Saint‐Germain 1980, pp. 24–7 (entry by Bruno Pons); and Contet 1910, who records that the property was sold by Ségur on 23 vendémiaire, an VI (14 October 1797) to Mme Veuve Demoreton for 87,000 francs. (Back to text.)

144 ‘Scellé sur les papiers de M. le Baron De Besenval Lieutenant Colonel des Gardes Suisses & C. En son hôtel rue de Grenelle St. Germain. 1 & 2 Aout 1789’ ( AN , Y‐13319‐B). (Back to text.)

145 See generally on these alterations effected by Besenval, and for interior and exterior photographs of the hôtel, Contet 1910, and Brugerolles 2015, nos 6a and 6b, reproducing Chevotet’s drawings of the hôtel’s façade facing the garden and that facing the courtyard. For an example of another contemporary top‐lit gallery, falsely later inscribed as that of Paul Randon de Boisset, see Gabriel de Saint‐Aubin’s drawing in the Musée des Tissus et des Arts décoratifs de Lyon, inv. 5272/a. (Back to text.)

146 For an account of Brongniart’s involvement, see Alexandre‐Théodore Brongniart 1986, pp. 85–8. Some further information on Brongniart is provided in the entry on Vigée Le Brun’s portrait of his daughter on pp. 534–45 of the present volume. (Back to text.)

147 Thiéry 1787, vol. 2, pp. 579–80. (Back to text.)

148 Contet 1910, p. 4. (Back to text.)

149 Thiéry 1787, vol. 2, p. 579. (Back to text.)

150 Contet 1910, p. 4. (Back to text.)

151 Scherf 1992, pp. 228–51, which contains an extensive discussion of Clodion’s work at the hôtel de Besenval and its iconography. (Back to text.)

152 Scherf 1992, nos 46–9 (entries by G. Scherf). (Back to text.)

153 Ibid. , no. 51 (entry by G. Scherf) and fig. 133. For a reduced terracotta version, cast possibly in Clodion’s studio, see Bennett and Sargentson 2008, no. 173 (entry by J. Bassett and C. Miner). There is a terracotta version, which Scherf regards as probably late, in the Pushkin Museum, Moscow. For a later reduced‐size copy in marble signed and dated ‘henry [sic] Dasson 1887’ incorporated into a mantel clock, see lot 1390, Christie’s, South Kensington, 26 October 2011. A small terracotta of a reclining water nymph by Joseph‐Charles Marin, which may have been inspired by Clodion’s La Source, was with Wildenstein, New York, in 2013 (ill. The Art Newspaper, November 2013, p. 11). Another terracotta, signed ‘Clodion’, 45.5 × 25.5 × 33 cm, is on the London art market. (Back to text.)

154 Scherf 1992, p. 248. (Back to text.)

155 Contet 1910. (Back to text.)

156 Scherf 1992, p. 251. See, however, Gabriel de Saint‐Aubin’s illustration of Mignot’s sculpted Vénus qui dort exhibited at the 1757 Salon (no. 150): Colin B. Bailey, ‘“The Indefatigable, Unclassifiable Art Lover”: Saint‐Aubin’s Curiosité’, Bailey 2007, pp. 71–107, fig.1. (Back to text.)

157 Fiechter 1993, p. 95. The sculpted male nude was represented at the hôtel de Besenval by at least two sculptures: Martin‐Claude Monot’s life‐size marble, Cupid flexing his Bow (of which the plaster model was shown at the 1769 Salon) and which was lot no. 93 of the Besenval’s posthumous sale of 23 thermidor, an III (14 August 1795, hereafter called ‘the 1795 Besenval sale’). See also on Monot’s sculpture, Rosenthal 2007, no. 34 (entry by G. Scherf); and a marble copy after the antique Dying Gladiator, no. 87 of the 1795 Besenval sale. (Back to text.)

158 ‘Mais une chose qui m’a fait un grand plaisir, ce sont les bains. Mon ami, c’est une des choses que vous ayez fait qui vous fera le plus d’honneur. Ils ont le caractère de l’antique. Les pierres ont un caractère de vétusté que l’humidité leur donne et qui sied au local … Mais la sculpture est bien morose et elle fait un disparate inconcevable avec l’architecture.’ (Cited by Silvestre de Sacy 1940, p. 62.) It is not possible to say whether Louise’s criticism of Clodion’s sculpture, which was an integral part of her husband’s architectural scheme, was sincere, or whether it was based on the assumption that her letter might be intercepted and was thus an attempt during the Terror to put some distance between the sculpture’s association with Besenval’s taste for the erotic and Brongniart’s more severe and then politically correct architectural style. (Back to text.)

159 Oil on canvas, 74 × 92 cm, Paris, private collection: Gaehtgens and Lugand 1988, no. 226. For Augustin‐Claude‐Simon Legrand’s drawing and engraving after Vien’s composition, see Roland Michel 2001, no. 73. (Back to text.)

160 As suggested by Scherf (1992, p. 251). (Back to text.)

161 Pierre‐Antoine Baudouin, Les amants surpris, 1764, gouache. The composition was the subject of a print of 1767 by Pierre‐Philippe Choffard dedicated to Besenval which spawned derivative prints: Portalis and Beraldi 1882, pp. 737, 755. (Back to text.)

162 Munhall 2002, no. 41. (Back to text.)

163 On the two gouaches by Baudouin in Besenval’s collection, see Launay 1991, no. 10 (ill. p. 221). A studio copy of Les soins tardifs is in the Musée Cognacq‐Jay, Paris: Sanchez 2004, vol. 1, p. 139, note 425. (Back to text.)

164 The drawing is in the Département des Arts graphiques, Musée du Louvre, inv. RF 27478. I am grateful to Joseph Baillio for informing me of the whereabouts of both the painting and the drawing. According to M. Sandoz (1983, p. 221), Besenval owned a second red chalk female nude by Lagrenée. See also Sandoz 1983, no. 212, where the painting is recorded as location unknown. (Back to text.)

165 See Cuzin 1988a, no. L 4, whereabouts unknown, where dated about 1775 and noted as lot 77 of the 1795 Besenval sale. The engraving was announced in Journal encyclopédique ou universal, 1 June 1783, p. 346. (Back to text.)

166 1795 Besenval sale, lot 70, being presumably the painting described as ‘Une [page 140]Femme se reposant sur un canapé’ when exhibited at the 1773 Salon (no. 52), although its measurements (31 pouces square) differ from those given in the sale catalogue. (Back to text.)

167 Ibid. , lot 76. (Back to text.)

168 Fiechter 1993, p. 99. A terracotta reduction of this statue with variants is in the Musée du Louvre, inv. RF 1174. The marble statue at Potsdam was still in Coustou’s studio in 1769: Gaborit 1998, p. 164. (Back to text.)

169 1795 Besenval sale, lot 90. See Souchal 1961. The original marble bust of Chryses was acquired directly from the sculptor in Rome by the Lyonnais ecclesiastic Antoine de Lacroix‐Lavalle around 1737–0. Lacroix‐Laval commissioned Slodtz to make a marble bust of Iphigenia as a contrasting pendant. Both busts arrived in Lyons in 1740 and were bequeathed by Lacroix‐Laval to the Académie de Lyon. In addition to the terracotta modelli made by Slodtz (now in the Louvre, invs ENT 1984.22 and ENT 1984.23, and formerly at the Musée national de la Céramique, Sèvres), Slodtz made a marble replica of his Iphigenia (1759 Salon), and possibly a second replica. He may well also have made pendant replicas of both busts towards the end of his life (Montcalm sale, 21 December 1857, lot 35): Souchal 1967, no. 147, and Chavanne 2011, nos 22 and 23 (entry by Juliette Trey). See also Les Dossiers des Archives Municipales 1992, pp. 176, 181. I am grateful to Isabelle Dubois for sending me extracts from this volume. The artist’s estate included a marble bust of Iphigenia but not of Chryses (Souchal 1961, p. 89). It is possible that the busts in Besenval’s collection were replicas commissioned by him some years after the original marbles had been made, or they may have been bought on the market. There is a related terracotta of Chrysès in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm. (Back to text.)

170 Le Faubourg Saint‐Germain 1980, p. 26 (entry by Bruno Pons) and information on the website of the Royal Collection Trust (www.royalcollection.org.uk), where illustrated. (Back to text.)

171 Respectively nos F255, F256: Hughes 1996, pp. 451–3 and 338–41. (Back to text.)

172 1795 Besenval sale, lot 67. (Back to text.)

173 Now in the Frick Art Museum, Pittsburgh, inv. 1970.32. See Salmon 2002, no. 41. (Back to text.)

174 For the duc de Choiseul’s collection, see Leclair 2008. Mme de Genlis recorded a visit to Besenval’s collection on 17 November 1788: ‘ce matin chés Le baron de buzenval. Il a une charmante collection de tableaux. Nous avons remarqué deux beaux vernets – un beau tableau de teniers rep. des Scieurs de Long. un charmant petit tableau très fini de mie [sic] nature de champagne rep. une annunciation La vierge est charmante, L’ange est trop vetu – La Salle de bains soutéraine est charmante elle est de brogniart, Le petit escalier qui y conduit est charmant par sa légèreté … Les bas reliefs de la Salle de bains sont tres beaux et sont de Clodion, ainsi que La naiade couchée qui est au haut du basin cette Statue n’est pas belle, mais fait de l’effet.’ (‘Journal de Mme de Genlis 1776–1798’, BN , Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Ms 15265, fols 101–2.) (Back to text.)

175 In the 1795 Besenval sale there were 74 paintings attributed to painters who had died before Besenval first came to Paris. They were contained in 64 lots. Lot no. 63 was described as ‘Laurent de la Hire. / Saint Jean l’évangiliste écrivant l’Apocalypse dans l’île de Pathmos, & dans le moment qu’une figure mystique lui apparoît dans un nuage. Ce tableau, distingué par sa haute qualité, se trouve gravé dans l’oeuvre de la Hire. H. 42 po. large 34. T.’ This painting may well be of the same composition as La Hyre’s red chalk drawing of the same subject in the Louvre (inv. 27482, recto) and of Rousselet’s engraving, although the ratio of height over width of the drawing (1.483) are not identical to those of the painting (1.235), nor is it clear from the painting’s description in the 1795 sale catalogue in which direction the saint is facing. For tentative identifications of lots 20 and 43 attributed to Teniers and Ter Borch respectively, see Edwards 1996, p. 283. (Back to text.)

176 Fiechter 1993, p. 201. (Back to text.)

177 Portalis 1910, p. 48, where the author cites an extract from Danloux’s journal dated 10 August 1792: ‘Je les [certain officers in the Swiss Guards] ai tous connus chez le Baron de Besenval où j’allais presque tous les jours les cinq ou six derniers mois de sa vie.’ (Back to text.)

178 Besenval 1805–7, vol. 1 (1805), pp. xiii–xiv, ‘... l’amour très‐vif qu’il eut pour les Arts et qu’il adora sans les étudier ni les approfondir; mais ce tact si sur … joint au gout le plus rare, vint à son secours, et présida tant au choix d’un superbe cabinet qu’il forma, qu’à ses avis motivés, dans l’Académie de peinture, dont il étoit Membre honoraire. / Les artistes qu’il aimoit et protégoit, et dont il étoit chéri, tant par ses qualités que par les services qu’il leur rendoit, étoient souvent surpris de l’intelligence avec laquelle il parloit de leur art; et j’ai plusieurs fois entendu des Sculpteurs, des Peintres, des Architectes, avouer qu’ils avoient dû des idées et des succès à ses conseils éclairés.’ (Back to text.)

179 My translation from the French in Wolzogen 1998, itself a translation from the German by M. Trémoun (entry for 20 March 1790). (Back to text.)

180 Marin deceased sale, Paris, Lebrun, 22 March 1790 and following days. (Back to text.)

181 Wintermute 1989, pp. 109–10. On the snuffbox, see Watson 1963. As Bailey noted (An Aspect of Collecting Taste 1986, p. 52), Besenval owned a painting by Blarenberghe of the battle of Lawfeld. Thiéry recorded it in the antechamber at the hôtel de Besenval: Thiéry 1787, p. 575. (Back to text.)

182 Michel 2010, pp. 378 and 421, notes 35 and 36, figs 111, 112. (Back to text.)

183 Brissonneau, Daguerre, Paris, 9 March 2012, lot 192, where the comparison with the chair in NG 6598 was made. (Back to text.)

184 See lot 191 of the same auction for an illustration of a fire screen with a similar profile, albeit with the addition of a folding shelf. In spite of chinoiserie not being fashionable in the later eighteenth century, an interest in things Chinese survived up to the Revolution: Hughes 1981, p. 22. Hughes notes that in 1775–8 a Chinese pagoda was built at Chanteloup, which Besenval certainly visited in 1775. See also p. 123 regarding the attribution to Besenval of a design for a Chinese pavilion at Romainville. (Back to text.)

185 The type of marble was kindly identified by Jacques Dubarry de Lassale, who advised that it was quarried at Seravezza (email of 20 February 2012). Sophie Mouquin, however, considers that it is not possible to be certain that the marble was quarried at that location (email of 12 October 2012). (Back to text.)

186 Mouquin 2003 also notes that quantities of brèche violette marble were imported into France during the 1740s to make chimneypieces at the châteaux de Choisy, Fontainebleau, Marly, Trianon and Versailles. (Back to text.)

187 The profile of the surround may be compared, for example, to that of the chimneypiece for the bedroom of Marie Leszczyńska installed in 1746 at the château de Fontainebleau and made by Ange‐Jacques Gabriel, Louis Trouard and Jacques Verberckt, and which is also made from brèche violette marble: ill. in Barbier 2012, p. 73, and ibid. , p. 74 for the persistence of the rococo style of chimneypiece into the 1770s. See ibid. , p. 68 for an illustration of a later example of the use of the same type of marble, and p. 72 for it and other highly decorated types of marble being fashionable (especially in the 1730s). (Back to text.)

188 They were offered for sale at Etude Couturier Nicolay, Paris, 31 March 1994, lot 61. I am grateful to Christophe de Quénetain for drawing my attention to them (email of 20 July 2015). (Back to text.)

189 An extract of an inventory dated 4 December 1786 of Besenval’s objets d’art was recently on the market with Librairie Cortade, Paris. I am grateful to Philippe Bordes for drawing my attention to its existence. (Back to text.)

190 Victoria and Albert Museum, Jones Bequest, inv. 820‐1882 and 820A‐1882, kindly brought to my attention by Christophe de Quénetain in his unpublished, undated note, ‘An exceptional Arita carp mounted as an inkset’, p. 14 (sent by email on 16 February 2012). Other pairs sold relatively recently were those respectively at Christie’s, London, December 1975 (lot 47), and at Sotheby’s, Paris, 22 October 2008 (lot 58, €180,750, formerly in the Michel Meyer collection and, according to Christophe de Quénetain, bought by McGuire, Minneapolis). (Back to text.)

191 Recorded in Courajod 1873, vol. 2, pp. 62–3, is a purchase by Mme de Pompadour on 16 October 1750 of ‘Quatre morceaux de porcelaine celadon, dont deux en forme de cornets et deux poissons, le tout garni en bronze doré d’or moulu, 3,600 l.’. The porcelain in NG 6598 is celadon, not the rarer pale blue colour as claimed by the cataloguer of lot 223, Europ Auctions, Paris, 17 November 2010. Contrary to the claim made by the cataloguer of a pair of carp offered at Sotheby’s, Paris, 5 May 2015, lot 119, they are not identical to that in NG 6598. (Back to text.)

192 Christophe de Quénetain (see note ~~191~~ 190 ), p. 10. (Back to text.)

193 See www.royalcollection.org.uk, inv. RCIN 360. (Back to text.)

194 The inventory recently with Jérôme Cortade, Paris (see note 190) appears to have been dictated by Besenval himself. An example of a pair of celadon carp is in the Asia Art Museum, San Francisco, inv. 1927.176, and another (as part of a garniture of three) in the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon (Christophe de Quénetain cited in note ~~191~~ 190 , p. 11). Another pair was sold from the Wildenstein Collection at Christie’s, London, 14–15 December 2005, lot 45. For an account of the collecting and display of gilt‐mounted oriental porcelain by eighteenth‐century French collectors, see Smentek 2007b, who points out (p. 16) that mounted porcelains would be placed before mirrors as in NG 6598 so that their visual qualities could be multiplied to spectacular advantage and their backs seen. (Back to text.)

195 Private collection, Minnesota, USA (bought Christie’s, London, 6 December 2007, lot 130, [page 141]£658,900); the other was recorded in the Bertram Currie collection (Christie’s, London, 26 March 1953, lot 20): information supplied by Christophe de Quénetain (see note ~~191~~ 190 ). (Back to text.)

196 Letter of 19 December 2004 to Charles Saumarez Smith, where Stevens notes the similar example in the Gaignat sale of 1768 referred to in the entry for Sotheby’s, Paris, 16 December 2004, lot 143. (Back to text.)

197 Courajod 1873, vol. 2, p. 277, part item 2436, 20 March 1756: ‘Deux carpes de porcelain ancienne sur des rochers rustiques, de 14 louis, 336 l.’. Information derived from Christophe de Quénetain. (Back to text.)

198 See Bailey 2007, p. 74, fig. 6. I am grateful to Christophe de Quénetain for this reference. (Back to text.)

199 Examples in private collections are recorded Sotheby’s, London, 17 April 1969 (lot 6); the Mr and Mrs William Wilberforce Winkworth collection, London, and the Mr and Mrs Soame Jenyns collection. The example in the Metropolitan Museum is inv. 197A, and that in the Fitzwilliam Museum inv. C.40‐1998. (Back to text.)

200 Christophe de Quénetain considers that the Arita carp in a private collection is ‘almost certainly’ that shown in NG 6598. (Back to text.)

201 Christophe de Quénetain has suggested that the meuble à hauteur d’appui may be Boulle revival style with a gilt‐bronze plaque at the centre (email of 22 February 2012). (Back to text.)

202 The inventory numbers of the Wallace Collection bookcases are invs F386 and F387. They were possibly those in the Besenval sale of 10 August 1795 (lot 186). (Back to text.)

203 As Nicholas Penny pointed out in a paper, ‘The Origins and Afterlife of the Régence Frame’, delivered at the National Gallery 1600–1800 Research Seminar, 12 May 2009. (Back to text.)

204 Thiéry 1787, pp. 575–7. (Back to text.)

205 An Aspect of Collecting Taste 1986, p. 52. Walls on which pictures were displayed were usually of green or red damask, but blue and yellow were also used: Bailey 1987 and Patrick Michel, ‘Lieux et dispositifs de la collection en France dans la seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle’, in Rasmussen 2009, pp. 131–59 at p. 137. Harenc de Presle, for example, hung some of his pictures against green damask and some against red: Pradère 2008, pp. 72–3. (Back to text.)

206 As Bailey pointed out in An Aspect of Collecting Taste 1986, p. 51. (Back to text.)

207 Thiéry 1787, p. 577. (Back to text.)

208 Wintermute 1989, p. 109. (Back to text.)

209 1795 Besenval sale, lot 50: ‘Corneil Poelemburg. Deux petits Tableaux de la plus grande finesse & de ce bel email de couleur tant recherché dans les productions de ce maître. Ils représentent des campagnes d’Italie, ornées de diverse figures analogues aux différens sites. H. 6 po. 6 lig. Larg. 8 po. 6 lig. B.’ The metric equivalent in centimetres, rounded up or down to the nearest millimetre, is 17.5 × 23 cm. ‘B’ indicates the support, in this case bois (wood). The metric measurements given in the following notes concerning lots in the 1795 sale have been similarly rounded. (Back to text.)

210 1795 Besenval sale, lot 51: ‘Par le même. Un autre petit Tableau de la première finesse représentant un portrait d’artiste. H. 4 po. 6 lig., larg. 4 po. C.’ (12.2 × 10.8 cm, on copper). (Back to text.)

211 1795 Besenval sale, lot 21 (not no. 22 as stated in Wintermute 1989, p. 111): ‘[David Teniers.] L’intérieur d’une chambre rustique, où l’on voit un paysan & une jeune fille assis près d’une table. Cette dernière paroît essayer à jouer d’un flageolet, tandis que l’homme, appuyé sur ses coudes, la regarde avec complaisance. On remarque encore dans une porte entr’ouverte une vielle femme espionnant ce tête à tête. H. 12 po. larg. 8 po. B.’ (32.5 × 21.7 cm, on wood). A cursory look at this picture shows that, if the identification is right, the measurement of the height given in the 1795 sale catalogue is wrong and that a closer Ancien Régime measurement would have been 14 po. 10 lig. (There were 12 lignes to each pouce.) (Back to text.)

212 1795 Besenval sale, lot 44: ‘Adam Pinaher. [sic] Un Tableau dont l’effet indique une belle soirée d’été. La partie droite est entièrement occupée par une masse de fabriques entourées d’une rivière. Le premier plan est orné d’un bateau où sont quelques passagers prêts à aborder un abreuvoir où sont des chevaux. La partie gauche, dans le lointain, est occupé par une isle agréable, qui se détache sur des montagnes. H. 18 po. larg. 25 B.’ (48.7 × 67.7 cm, on wood).

Four pictures are attributed to Adriaen van Ostade in the 1795 sale catalogue, lots 34, 35 and two paintings in the single lot 36. The measurements of the first are approximately 35 × 33.5cm, but the position of the cartouche at the top of the frame shows that the painting in NG 6598 is markedly wider than it is high. The measurements of the other three paintings attributed to Ostade in the sale catalogue are as unlikely as their subject matter. (Back to text.)

213 1795 Besenval sale, lot 48: ‘Albert Cuyp. Le point de vue d’un paysage pris à l’effet d’un soleil couchant. Le premier plan est enrichi de deux cavaliers, dont l’un est occupé à raccommoder la bride de son cheval. On distingue encore plusieurs figures qui contribuent à l’intérêt de ce tableau admirable par son execution & son harmonie. H. 17 p., larg. 22. B.’ (46 × 59.6 cm, on wood). (Back to text.)

214 1795 Besenval sale, lot 32: ‘[Guil/ van Develde.] Un autre tableau aussi parfait, représentant une mer calme, avec diverses barques de pêcheurs, garnies de leurs voiles. Même grandeur du precedent. [H. 12 po. larg. 14] T.’ (32.5 × 37.9 cm, on canvas). (Back to text.)

215 1795 Besenval sale, lot 5: ‘C. Maratti. Deux tableaux de forme ovale, offrant les compositions les plus gracieuses; l’un représente Jupiter, transformé en cigne, & caressant Léda; l’autre, Danaé, recevant la pluie d’or. Ces tableaux tiennent encore au pinceau de P. Mattey. H. 11 p. larg. 13 p. Cuivre’ (29.8 × 35.2 cm, on copper). The only other painting in the 1795 sale identified as an oval is no. 22, attributed to Teniers, ‘Un Médecin ou Chimiste, vu debout dans son laboratoire…’, but its dimensions, 12 pouces × 9 pouces 6 lignes (that is, about 32.5 × 25.7 cm) make it unlikely that this is the picture shown, the width of which is similar to that of the Van der Velde. (Back to text.)

216 By Bailey in Wintermute 1989, p. 109, and Thiéry 1787, p. 576. (Back to text.)

217 Olivier Bonfait has called the reflected representation of this last painting a ‘signe manifeste du jeu d’échos entre [NG 6598] et la peinture finie des maîtres hollandais’: ‘Du genre au genre à Paris autour de 1800: “Moeulleux fini” et “Velouté du satin” de Gerrit Dou à Marguerite Gérard’, in Costamagna and Bonfait 2008, pp. 81–91, at p. 91. (Back to text.)

218 Paintings exhibited at the Salons were hung with their frames virtually touching each other: Pichet 2012, p. 57. For an example of a crowded hang in a private collection, see Hubert Robert’s Le salon du bailli de Breteuil, about 1765, red chalk, 34.9 × 48.8 cm, Paris, Louvre, département des Arts graphiques, inv. RF 28983 recto. (Back to text.)

219 Besenval 1927 edn, p. 90. (Back to text.)

220 The Order of Saint Louis was replaced in France by the Ordre du mérite militaire in January 1791 before the cross of the Order was entirely suppressed by the Convention in October 1792: Mazas and Anne 1860–1, vol. 2 (1860), pp. 502–5, and vol. 3 (1861), p. iv. (Back to text.)

221 The profile portrait had associations with the Antique in the form of coins, medals and carved jewels. The 1795 Besenval sale contained a number of cameos or intaglios of heads of Roman emperors and others, which were probably carved in profile (lots 209–20). (Back to text.)

222 The portrait of Dussek is in the Royal College of Music, London. (Back to text.)

223 In L’agréable surprise, reproduced in Meslay 2006 (2007), p. 226, figs 25 and 26. (Back to text.)

224 See note 177, and Meslay 2006 (2007), pp. 233–4. (Back to text.)

225 Thiéry 1787, pp. 578–9. (Back to text.)

226 See note 144. (Back to text.)

227 Email of 24 April 2015 from Aileen Ribeiro. (Back to text.)

228 Meslay 2006 (2007), pp. 233–4, however, sees NG 6598 as impregnated with melancholy, in which Besenval ‘attend la mort qui surviendra calmement quelques mois plus tard’. (Back to text.)

229 Letter of 7 December 1906 from Roger de Portalis to Antonin Danloux: Bibliothèque de l’ INHA , collections Jacques Doucet, Archives d’Antonin Danloux, archives 123, carton 1.4. (Back to text.)

Abbreviations

AN: Allgemeines Künstler Lexikon
BL: British Library, London
BN: Bibliothèque nationale, Paris
Est: Cabinet des Estampes
INHA: Institut national d’histoire de l’art, Paris

Technical abbreviations

Macro‐XRF: Macro X‐ray fluorescence
XRD: X‐ray powder diffraction

List of archive references cited

Cherisey Archives Familiales, ref. J.L.C.: Mémoires de la Comtesse du Maisniel, 1892
London, British Library, F.54[2]: Discours Prononcé le 30 juillet 1789, à l’Hôtel‐de‐Ville, par M.Necker, Directeur general des Finances, à l’Assemblée des Représentants des Districts, et à l’Assemblée générale des Électeurs, Paris 1789
London, National Gallery, Archive: MaryAnne Stevens, letter to Charles Saumarez Smith, 19 December 2004
Los Angeles, Getty Research Institute, Heim Papers, Box 66: letter from Andrew Ciechonowiecki to Alastair Laing, 2 November 1989
Paris, Archives nationales, Archives de la Guerre, Dossier Besenval
Paris, Archives nationales, C 35, no. 298 5: Pierre‐Joseph‐Victor de Besenval, Besenval, letter to de Launay, 14 July 1789
Paris, Archives nationales, Y‐13319‐B: Scellé sur les papiers de M. le Baron De Besenval Lieutenant Colonel des Gardes Suisses & C. En son hôtel rue de Grenelle St. Germain. 1 & 2 Aout 1789
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Ms 15265: Journal de Mme de Genlis 1776–1798
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, MFICHE 8‐LM3‐207: Notice sur la famille de Chérisey. Extrait de la Statistique historique du department de la Moselle, publié par Verronnais, 1844
Paris, Institut national d’histoire de l’art, Bibliothèque, Collections Jacques Doucet, Archives 123, carton 1.4: Archives d’Antonin Danloux, Letter from Roger de Portalis to Antonin Danloux, 7 December 1906
Paris, Institut national d’histoire de l’art, Bibliothèque, Collections Jacques Doucet, Archives 123, carton 1.4: Archives d’Antonin Danloux, The baron de Coullongue, letter to Antonin Danloux, 15 August 1901
Paris, Musée de l’histoire de France, série armoire de fer et Musée, côte AE/1/6/6: Liste des personnes que la Reine voit dans des cas particuliers pour l’année 1784

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List of exhibitions cited

New York 1980–1: New York, China Institute of America, Chinese Porcelains in European Mounts, 1980–1
New York 1986: New York, Stair Sainty Matthiessen, An Aspect of Collecting Taste, 1986
New York 1989: New York, Colnaghi, 1789: French Art During the Revolution, 1989
Ottawa, Washington DC and Berlin 2003–4: Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada; Washington DC, National Gallery of Art; Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, The Age of Watteau, Chardin, and Fragonard: Masterpieces of French Genre Painting, 2003–4 (exh. cat.: Holland 1963)
Paris 1967: Paris, Hôtel de Rohan, Les Grandes Heures de l’Amitié Franco‐Suisse, 1967

The Organisation of the Catalogue

This is a catalogue of the eighteenth‐century French paintings in the National Gallery. Following the example of Martin Davies’s 1957 catalogue of the Gallery’s French paintings, the catalogue includes works by or after some artists who were not French: Jean‐Etienne Liotard, who was Swiss, Alexander Roslin, who was Swedish, and Philippe Mercier, born in Berlin of French extraction but working mainly in England.

Works are catalogued by alphabetical order of artist, and multiple works by an artist are arranged in order of date or suggested date. Works considered to be autograph come first, followed by works in which I believe the studio played a part, those which are studio productions, and later copies. Artists’ biographies are summary only.

The preliminary essay and all entries and artist biographies are by Humphrey Wine unless initialled by one of the authors listed on p. 4.

Each entry is arranged as follows:

Title: The traditional title of each painting has been adopted except where misleading to do so.

Date: The date, or the suggested date, is given immediately below the title. The reason for any suggested date is explained in the body of the catalogue entry.

Media and measurementS: Height precedes width, and measurements (in centimetres) are of the painted surface to the nearest millimetre ignoring insignificant variations. Additional information on media and measurements, where appropriate, is provided in the Technical Notes.

Inscriptions: Where the work is inscribed, the inscription is given immediately after the note of media and measurements. Information is derived from observation, whether by the naked eye or with the help of a microscope, by the cataloguer and a member of the Conservation Department. The use of square brackets indicates letters or numerals that are not visible, but reasonably presumed once to have been so.

Provenance: Information on former owners is provided under Provenance and the related endnotes. A number of significant owners, including Sir Bernard Eckstein; Ernest William Beckett, 2nd Baron Grimthorpe; John Arthur and Mary Venetia James; Yolande Lyne Stephens; Sir John Pringle; Mrs Mozelle Sassoon; James Stuart of Dunearn; John Webb; and Consuelo and Emilie Yznaga, are discussed further in an appendix to this volume on the National Gallery website, ‘Former Owners of the Eighteenth‐Century French Paintings’ (see ~~https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/research/national‐gallery‐catalogues/former‐owners‐of‐the‐eighteenth‐century‐french‐paintings~~ https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/research/research-resources/national-gallery-catalogues/former-owners-of-the-eighteenth-century-french-paintings-in-the-national-gallery-1 ).

Exhibitions: Long‐term loans to other collections have been included under this heading, but they do not appear in the List of Exhibitions at the end of the catalogue. Exhibitions in that list appear in date order.

Related Works: Dimensions are given where known, and works are in oil on canvas unless otherwise indicated. They have not been verified by ~~first hand~~ first‐hand inspection. Dimensions of drawings or prints, other than in captions to illustrations, are not given unless they are exceptional. Dimensions are given in centimetres, but other units of measurement used in, say, an auction catalogue have been retained. The metric equivalent of an Ancien Régime pouce is 2.7 cm and (after 1825) that of an inch is 2.54 cm. In the case of prints, where measurements are given, it has not always been possible to determine whether they are of the plate or the image.

Technical Notes: All works in the catalogue were examined in the Conservation Studio by Paul Ackroyd and Ashok Roy of the Conservation and Scientific Departments respectively, generally together with the author of the catalogue entry. The records of these observations were used to compile the catalogue’s Technical Notes. In support of these studies, paint samples for examination and analysis were taken by Ashok Roy from approximately 60 per cent of the paintings in order to establish the nature and constitution of ground layers, the identity of certain pigments, to investigate possible colour changes in paint layers and to answer curatorial enquiries relating to layer structure (as determined by paint cross‐sections). A few more works had already been sampled, mainly in conjunction with past conservation treatments, and the observations from these past studies were reviewed and incorporated. These studies were carried out by Ashok Roy, Marika Spring, Joyce Plesters and Aviva Burnstock. Paint samples and cross‐sections were examined by optical microscopy, and instrumental analysis of pigments was based largely on scanning electron microscopy coupled with energy dispersive X‐ray analysis. Early in the cataloguing programme, some work with X‐ray diffraction analysis ( XRD ) was carried out for further characterisation of certain pigments. Some of these results had already been published separately; these papers are cited in the catalogue text. Similarly, any published analyses of the paint binder are cited, or if not published then reference is made to the reports in the Scientific Department files. The majority of the [page 36]analyses of the organic component of paint samples from works in this catalogue were carried out by Raymond White.

At a later stage in the cataloguing programme Rachel Billinge carried out infrared reflectography on 30 of the 72 works using an OSIRIS digital infrared scanning camera with an indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs) array sensor (8 had already been examined by infrared imaging, usually in connection with a conservation treatment). At the same time she reviewed the entries, adding observations from technical imaging (both X‐radiography and infrared reflectography) and incorporating some additional details about materials and techniques from stereomicroscopy (photomicrographs were made of 12 works). Where X‐radiographs have been made, the individual plates were scanned and composite X‐ray images assembled. Some, but not all, were further processed to remove the stretcher bars from the digital image. Some further paint samples from a few works for which there were still outstanding questions at this stage in the cataloguing programme were examined and analysed. These analyses were carried out by Marika Spring, with contributions on individual paintings from Joanna Russell, Gabriella Macaro, Marta Melchiorre di Crescenzo, Helen Howard and David Peggie.

Macro‐X‐ray fluorescence scanning was carried out by Marika Spring and Rachel Billinge on one work, Perronneau’s pastel, A Girl with a Kitten (NG 3588), to provide fuller understanding of its means of creation than had been available from earlier analyses of the materials. The pastel was scanned during the summer of 2015 thanks to the loan of a Bruker M6 Jetstream macro‐X‐ray fluorescence scanner by Delft University of Technology through collaboration with Dr Joris Dik, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Chair, Materials in Art and Archeology, Department of Materials Science and Dr Annelies van Loon, now Paintings Research Scientist at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. This mobile system, the first commercially available macro‐XRF scanner, was developed by Bruker Nano GmbH in close collaboration with Antwerp University and Delft University of Technology (see Alfeld 2013, pp. 760–7). This examination included transmitted infrared reflectography and some further directed sampling to aid interpretation of the new results.

Frames: Information is given only in the case of a frame which is, or which is likely to be, original to the painting.

Text: With the exception of the Lagrenée, which was not formally acquired until July 2016, the entries take account of information and opinions of which the cataloguers were aware as at 30 June 2016.

Lifespan dates, where known, are given in the Provenance section and in the Index.

General References: These do not provide a list of every published reference. The annual catalogues published by the Gallery before the First World War mainly repeat the information in the first Gallery catalogue in which the painting in question was published. Consequently, only the first catalogue and later catalogues containing additional or revised information have been referenced. In all relevant cases references have been given to Martin Davies’s 1946 and 1957 catalogues. In the case of works acquired after 1957, reference is made to the interim catalogue entry published in the relevant National Gallery Report. No reference to entries in the Gallery’s Complete Illustrated Catalogue (London 2001) has been given since they contained no previously unpublished information. Other references are to catalogues raisonnés and other significant publications concerning the painting in question.

Bibliography: This includes all references cited in the endnotes to catalogue entries other than references to archival sources, which are given in full in the endnotes. Cited articles from newspapers, magazines, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and Who Was Who have usually been accessed via their respective online portals.

List of Exhibitions: This is a list of exhibitions in which the paintings have appeared. The list is in date order. The author of the accompanying exhibition catalogue or catalogue entry is given where known. Exhibition catalogues are included in the Bibliography, by author.

About this version

Version 3, generated from files HW_2018__16.xml dated 06/03/2025 and database__16.xml dated 09/03/2025 using stylesheet 16_teiToHtml_externalDb.xsl dated 03/01/2025. Entries for NG1090, NG2897, NG4078, NG5583, NG6422, NG6435, NG6445, NG6495, NG6592, NG6598 and NG6600-NG6601 marked for publication.

Cite this entry

Permalink (this version): https://data.ng.ac.uk/0EAI-000B-0000-0000
Permalink (latest version): https://data.ng.ac.uk/0E7K-000B-0000-0000
Chicago style: Wine, Humphrey. “NG 6598, The Baron de Besenval in his Salon”. 2018, online version 3, March 9, 2025. https://data.ng.ac.uk/0EAI-000B-0000-0000.
Harvard style: Wine, Humphrey (2018) NG 6598, The Baron de Besenval in his Salon. Online version 3, London: National Gallery, 2025. Available at: https://data.ng.ac.uk/0EAI-000B-0000-0000 (Accessed: 31 March 2025).
MHRA style: Wine, Humphrey, NG 6598, The Baron de Besenval in his Salon (National Gallery, 2018; online version 3, 2025) <https://data.ng.ac.uk/0EAI-000B-0000-0000> [accessed: 31 March 2025]

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The Baron de Besenval in his Salon:Catalogue entry