François-Hubert Drouais, 'The Comte de Vaudreuil', 1758

Joseph-Hyacinthe-François de Paule de Rigaud, comte de Vaudreuil (1740–1817), was only eighteen when this imposing portrait was painted by Drouais in 1758. He was the son of the governor and commander-general of Saint-Domingue, at that time a French colony on the western end of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, which is why he points to it on a map. Without lifting a finger, the count earned substantial income from enslaved labour on its plantations.

Vaudreuil was in France by 1757, having left Saint-Domingue (his father ceased to be governor the same year). When his portrait was painted, he was a junior army officer and had already been at the Battle of Rossbach (5 November 1757) in Saxony during the Seven Years War, when the French had suffered a disastrous defeat by the Prussians. Although he is not in uniform, the armour at the bottom right of the painting and the map, titled (in French) ‘the German Empire,’ behind his head allude to his military service. The reference to Germany was not just personal but also contained a political message: by turning his back on the map of Germany and partially covering it with a map of the Caribbean showing Saint-Domingue, Vaudreuil asserts the importance of the colony for French interests and its importance relative to continental Europe. The fall of Guadeloupe to the British on 1 May 1759, just weeks before the opening of the Salon, where the portrait may have been exhibited, would have made this message even more pointed.

Instead of his uniform, Vaudreuil wears a blue velvet coat lined with squirrel fur and a brocade waistcoat with festoons of gold and silver lace. His wig is tied in place by a black silk ribbon fastened in a bow at the neck. The red heels on his shoes indicate his aristocratic status. Behind him is a giltwood Louis XV chair covered with red damask on which he has placed his black tricorne hat and leather gloves. This meticulous attention to detail, especially the depiction of luxurious fabrics, was typical of Drouais’s style and can be seen in his portrait of Madame de Pompadour. Drouais’s idealising portraits, which often flattered his sitters, were hugely popular with the French elite. Although still only a young man and hardly in need of flattery, the count has a flawless complexion with rosy cheeks and lips and large bright eyes. Despite Vaudreuil’s status, the portrait has an air of informality and, rather than military stiffness, his long slender body has a slight tilt.

The count continued his military career while also amassing great wealth through inheritance and from his sugar cane plantations at Saint-Domingue. A collector and patron of the arts, he was a close friend of Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, who claimed he had ‘every quality and grace which can render a man attractive.’ Vaudreuil was part of the circle around Queen Marie Antoinette and, like many aristocrats, fled France within days of the fall of the Bastille in July 1789, at the start of the French Revolution. With the restoration of the French monarchy in 1814, he returned to France, where he died in 1817. In 1791 a rebellion by its enslaved population broke out on Saint-Domingue. The new French Republic abolished slavery in its colonies in 1794, although it was temporarily restored by Napoleon in 1802. The French finally withdrew in late 1803 and the following year western Hispaniola declared independence as Haiti, its indigenous name.