Nicolas de Largillierre and Studio, 'Mme de Souscarrière (?) and her Page', probably 1729

As distasteful as we find it today, it was not uncommon in the eighteenth century for sitters to choose to be portrayed alongside a Black page as a sign of their wealth and status. This boy, with his lustrous earring and suit of embroidered velvet, is treated like the woman’s pearl-encrusted clothes and peacock-feather fan: a symbol of her affluence. Amid so much gold and silver thread, his collar – a sign of his enslaved status – is a horrible parody of jewellery.

When this painting entered our collection in 1924, it was believed to be a portrait of Charlotte Amelia, Princess Rákóczi (1679–1722). The princess appears to have arrived in Paris in 1721 and stayed at the Convent of the Visitation, where she died a year later. However, the lady here does not look like the princess in the portrait painted by David Richter the Elder in 1704 (Magyar Nemzeti Muzéum, Budapest), in which her lips are noticeably fuller and her face longer. The date of 1729 on the version of this portrait by Largillierre in Cologne (on permanent loan to the Wallraf-Richartz Museum), also makes it unlikely that it was painted seven years after the princess’s death.

The alternative suggestion is that the lady is Mme de Souscarrière, wife of Jean-Baptiste Bosc, chevalier seigneur de Souscarrière. This is based on a tradition in the family who sold the Cologne version of the portrait in 1990. On 9 February 1728, Mme de Souscarrière’s daughter Marguerite married and it is possible that a ‘mother of the bride’ portrait was commissioned. Mme de Souscarrière’s family had connections to the slave trade, which may also explain the presence of the enslaved boy in the portrait.

Mme de Souscarrière, if this is she, is opulently dressed with large pearls on her bodice. The gold ornament in her hair, decorated with herons’ feathers and a large baroque pearl, appears very similar to that worn by the sitter in Largillierre’s other portrait in the National Gallery’s collection. Her fan is made of peacock feathers and she wears a corsage of three large carnations pinned to her breast. Her skirt and sleeves are of extremely elaborate golden brown damask embroidered with gold and silver thread and lined with blue silk, and her blue velvet bodice is embroidered in gold. The long maroon velvet robe she wears is lined with luxurious soft brown fur.

The lady’s costume, the peacock-feather fan and the corsage of carnations all appear in other portraits by Largillierre, suggesting that a sitter could choose stock elements to be included in a ‘top-of-the-range’ portrait by him. Mme de Souscarrière may not herself have owned any part of her costume, and this particular boy may not have been part of her household, although there certainly were enslaved Africans in eighteenth-century France. He may have been added for visual effect, a signifier of wealth in an age which made little distinction between the possession of peacock feathers or rare jewels and a Black child.

The National Gallery’s painting is not as high quality as the version of the portrait in Cologne, suggesting that it may have been made with studio assistance.