Louis XVI - portrait busts

Here are a few notes on the known portrait busts of Louis XVI.  The list (as given in H. H.Arnason's study of Houdon) is as follows:
Pajou - first portrait in 1775
Boizot - 1777 and 1785
Houdon - c.1787
Deseine - 1790.


Louis by Pajou

Augustin Pajou (1730-1809) was sculptor of the official portrait bust of Louis XVI, commissioned shortly after his coronation, in December 1774.

Louis XVI by Pajou, marble, signed and dated 1779.  In King's Private Apartments, Palace of Versailles.
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According to James David Draper in the Metropolitan's 1997 Pajou exhibition catalogue, "although he was well paid for them, his busts of royalty form the weakest aspect of Pajou's portraiture".  His "big Salon for royal busts" was in 1767 when he exhibited busts of the late Dauphin (d.1765) together with his three sons, the future Louis XVI, the comte de Provence and the comte d'Artois.  Bachaumont reported that crowds rushed to see them, but Diderot dismissed the works as "duller, more ignoble, more foolish than I know how to tell you." In 1776 additional busts of the Dauphin were ordered; today only three unsigned "lackluster marbles" survive in the Versailles collections (Draper & Scherf, p.223).  There is no known example of the bust of the young Louis.

A portrait of Louis XVI by Kucharski (and other royal portraits)

At the end of September 2015 the sale took place at Christie's in Paris of over a thousand pieces from the collection of the author and TV producer Jean-Louis Remilleux.  In 2012 Remilleux bought the 18th-century château de Digoine in the department of Saône-et-Loire with the intention of restoring it and opening it to the public.  The sale was to finance future restoration work in the stables, gardens and outbuildings and ensure the preservation of a magnificent 19th-century private "théâtre de société”.  The most expensive lots were mostly furniture:  a settee stamped by Mathieu Bauve was estimated at €350,000-€450,000.

Lot 101:  A portrait of Louis XVI by Alexander Kucharski