In 2014 I wrote a post on the portraits of Marie-Antoinette by Lorraine artist François Dumont. Since then several new portraits have appeared at auction including, remarkably, just last month, this beautiful miniature concealed in a snuffbox, which is said to have been carried by Louis XVI on the flight to Varennes.
I thought it might be an opportune moment to revisit my earlier essay, particularly with reference to the depiction of the Queen in antique costume, or "en vestale", of which the new miniature is a significant example.
The Gouache
The original version of this composition is now generally agreed to be a gouache from the former collection of the duc de Mouchy. It is known from a black-and-white photograph on Gallica (De Vinck 5669), where it is catalogued as "Marie-Antoinette en Iphigénie" (n.d.). Despite the joint attribution to Dumont and the engraver Tardieu, the photograph shows a work of art rather than an engraving. (The annotation reads "Gouache de Dumont, Chez le duc de Mouchy, au château de Mouchy (Oise)") According to Marguerite Jallut, who reproduced the photo in her book Marie-Antoinette et ses peintres (1955), this picture once stood on Louis XVI's bureau in the Tuileries, whilst a smaller copy accompanied him on the ill-fated journey to Varennes.
Until recently, there was no information concerning the current location of the portrait. However, in 2021 a new, colour photograph featured in the exhibition "Vivre à l'antique" at Rambouillet. The illustration from the accompanying catalogue, by Renaud Serrette and Gabriel Wick, was posted on the Forum Marie-Antoinette:
For the first time Marie-Antoinette can be seen resplendent in a golden gown. The medium is given as aquarelle and gouache on ivory. The small size, 20 cm x 15 cm, makes the portrait eminently suitable for display on a table or bureau. An annotation confirms Marguerite Jallut's identification:
According to the inscription on the back, this miniature, which was kept in Louis XVI's cabinet, had been given to him by Marie-Antoinette (described as"la meilleure, la plus aimable, la plus infortunée"). Acknowledged by François Dumont as the only full-length version ("la seule faite en pied"), the work was found among the debris of the Tuileries Palace in 1792.
The location is given as the "collection of the château de Mouchy". (The contributor to the Forum Marie-Antoinette tells us that the illustration acknowledges do not provide any further information.) This is at first sight puzzling: the duc de Mouchy amassed his collection during the Second Empire and his château, a splendid mock-Renaissance edifice, is long-gone, damaged during the War and demolished altogether in the 1960s. However, it now seems the collection itself survives. In 2021 an "attic" sale (literally the contents of some remaining outbuildings) netted €1.4 M and no doubt more valuable items, Dumont's portrait among them, are in storage elsewhere.
What does the picture actually represent? The Rambouillet catalogue specifies only that subject is Marie-Antoinette "en costume à l'Antique" . Here is the (English) text from the panel in the exhibition:
The Marie-Antoinette - the staging of Antique virtue
The elaborate and imaginative archaeological studies of ancient temples, such as the Temple of Isis in Pompeii or that of Jupiter Serapis in Pozzuoli, published in works such as the Abbé de Saint-Non's Voyage Pittoresque, inspired an interest in ancient cults and rites. An offshoot of this passion was the proliferation of classical ruins and temples in aristocratic and royal gardens in the late 1770s and 1780s; fashionable landscape gardens such as Monceau, the Petit Trianon and Méréville were embellished with ever more complex and costly pastiches of ancient sacred buildings. Despite their location within gardens, these buildings had a serious purpose: to glorify their builders by celebrating their virtue, or purity, or heroism. For example, in 1778, Marie-Antoinette ordered her architect Richard Mique to erect the Temple of Love in the Petit Trianon to celebrate the birth of her first child.
The Queen's dairy (at Rambouillet) is unquestionably the most elaborate and complete evocation of Antiquity in an 18th-century garden. Although designed for Marie-Antoinette and her entourage to taste dairy products, the symbolic presentation of the queen imagined by the Comte d'Angiviller as a nurturing mother and incorruptible priestess figure, is powerfully affirmed here. Taking its cues from the temples of Herculaneum and Pompeii, the dairy would be embellished with an interior decor, furniture and a tasting service modelled after those of ancient cults.
Although there is no convincing reason to identify the mise-en-scene with a particular antique figure, the pose is clearly resembles the much earlier Marie-Antoinette "en vestale" by the Belgian artist Charles Leclercq (formerly ascribed to Frédéric-Jean Schall). This portrait was acquired by Versailles in 2018 and featured in the Rambouillet exhibition. The props - flowers, metal jug - are very similar, whilst Dumont's round altar is like the Vestal hearth, though without the flame. Olivier Blanc very plausibly suggests that this is intended as an altar to"amitié", and that the image represents conjugal love elevated into passionate friendship - an expression of support in troubled times. This idea is consistent with the personal nature of the commission and also explains Louis's fondness for the picture.
The Miniature belonging to Louis XVI
Auction Art Rémy Le Fur & Associés, Souvenirs intimes de la Maison de France. Hôtel Drouot Paris, 25th June 2025.
Lot 104: Double-lidded tortoiseshell snuffbox concealing a polychrome miniature on ivory of the Queen, signed at the bottom left by François Dumont (1751–1831). Diameter 8.8 cm.
https://www.auctionartparis.com/en/lot/163000/29568184?
This gorgeous little miniature, in its snuffbox, was the most important lot in the recent sale, by Auction Art Rémy Le Fur, of items belonging to the heirs of the royal governess the Duchesse de Tourzel. It was sold for almost €53,000 against an estimate of €10,000–15,000 and was subsequently revealed to have been purchased by the Société des Amis de Versailles for the Palace collections.
The work has been previously exhibited on several occasions ( in 1894, 1927 and 1955), but this is the first time it has been securely identified as the miniature which the King took with him to Varennes.
A typewritten note which accompanies the lot reads:
During the journey from Paris to Varennes, King Louis XVI had with him this snuffbox; fearing that he would be searched (as happened at Varennes), he entrusted it to the Duchesse de Tourzel, who was accompanying the Royal Family.
After the arrest at Varennes, the incarceration in the Temple and the death of the King, Madame de Tourzel wanted to return the snuffbox to the Queen; but the latter left it with her as a souvenir of her devotion to the Royal Family.
The miniature in this stuffbox, signed Dumont, has never been reproduced.
Sworders Fine Art Auctioners, Fine Interiors. London, 29th June 2021.
Lot 12. François Dumont, Portrait of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France (1755-1793), standing full length by a porphyry column, holding flowers in a vase bearing a profile relief of Louis XVI. Signed 'F Dumont' and dated 1815. Oil on canvas. 68 cm x 54.5 cm
The final piece in the puzzle is this version in oils, which was auctioned in 2021. An illustration of the painting, which varies only in minor details from the gouache, was published by Olivier Blanc in his Portraits de femmes in 2006, where it was mistakenly dated to 1791. However, the auction of 2021 made it clear that this is a later reprise, signed and dated 1815.
The painting has in fact changed hands quite frequently over the years. This time it was sold by Sworders Fine Art Auctioners in London as part of the contents of Farm House, Farm Street, Mayfair, former home of Alan and Mary Hobart, founders of the Pyms Gallery. This was not a specialist sale and the picture sold for a relatively modest £5,000. In 2022 it was acquired by the Musée du Chateau at Lunéville. The museum director, Thierry Franz emphasised that the informal setting and presence of flowers make the work a fitting contribution to the curatorial theme of Lunéville as "un palais aux champs".
From the label to the portrait, as exhibited at Lunéville in 2023:
François Dumont studied at the Court of Lorraine with Jean Girardet, Premier peintre of King Stanislas, before moving to Paris and specialising in miniatures. The Queen of France, Marie-Antoinette gave him her protection. In this composition, painted twenty-two years after Marie-Antoinette's execution, Dumont revisits a miniature on ivory painted in around 1790. The daughter of Duke Francis III of Lorraine and the Hapsburg Empress Marie-Theresa, the celebrated queen of France shared the same taste for nature as the Duchess Élisabeth-Charlotte, her paternal grandmother.
There is no further information to be had about the subject, though the auctioneers Sworders again mention Olivier Blanc's idea of an altar to friendship. This interpretation is reinforced by the image of Louis XVI which has been added the jug. The Royalist theme is also underlined in this Restoration version by the conspicuous presence of lilies among the flowers.
Other later versions
Dumont, who lived until 1831, habitually turned out copies of his paintings, especially the miniatures and there are several later versions of the Marie-Antoinette "en vestale", dating from the Restoration period. The auction notes to the Tourzel miniature pick out two examples in public collections:
- The first is a less finished miniature in the Department of Graphic Arts of the Louvre (inv.RF23, Recto) which is dated, with reference to a virtually identical portrait sold by Drouet in 1989, to 1814.
The Forum Marie-Antoinette draws attention to several other examples, including this miniature in the Musée Jacquemart-André:
- The second portrait referenced is this lovely sketch in black stone and sanguine, which is mounted in an
album amicorum belonging to the Princess Constance de Salm, purchased by the Louvre in 2021. The work is signed but not dated. The album itself was compiled between about 1809 and the Princess's death in 1841.
Louvre, Portrait de Marie-Antoinette (Dumont)
The Engraving
This engraving by Pierre-Alexandre Tardieu, is the only version of the composition intended for wider public consumption. The original copper plate is one of the few added to collection of the Chalcographie du Louvre during the Restoration, so that it is still possible to buy new copies.
Jointly dedicated by Dumont and Tardieu to the Duchess Angoulême, the work is a faithful copy of Dumont's oil of 1815. The inscription tells us that it was begun in 1792 and finished by Tardieu. (The website of the Atelier de Chalcographie du Louvre has 1793 which is clearly a mistake.). The wording is slightly ambiguous, but it is usually taken to mean that the project for an engraving (rather than just the original painting) dates back to 1792. Perhaps the Queen, moved by the Dumont's delicate homage, had wished to give his allegory of classical virtue wider currency? If so, this was not to be: Tardieu was rapidly forced to abandon his work in the face of the onrush of Revolutionary events, returning to his theme only under the Restoration.
Annotations (in small writing immediately below the image):
L: "Peint par F. Dumont, ptre. Du Roi, Membre de son Académie"
R: "Commencé en 1792 et terminé par Alex Tardieu, gr. De la Marine"
References
Discussion on the Forum Marie Antoinette:
Aurore Chéry Truffaut, "Les débuts de Marie-Antoinette en vestale", À travers champs (academic blog on Hypotheses), 20.06.2021. Includes links to several previous posts.
Notice for the exhibition "Vivre à l’antique", Château de Rambouillet, 19 June - 9 August 2021" Enfilade 9th July 2021.
The Société des Amis de Versailles announces the acquisition of the Tourzel snuffbox, 7th July 2025.
In 2014 I wrote a post on the portraits of Marie-Antoinette by Lorraine artist François Dumont. Since then several new portraits have appeared at auction including, remarkably, just last month, this beautiful miniature concealed in a snuffbox, which is said to have been carried by Louis XVI on the flight to Varennes. 
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