Workshop of Jean-Baptiste Isabey, Portrait of Hortense de Beauharnais, ca. 1807–11

Chicago:

Blythe Sobol, “Workshop of Jean-Baptiste Isabey, Portrait of Hortense de Beauharnais, ca. 1807–11,” catalogue entry in Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Blythe Sobol, and Maggie Keenan, The Starr Collection of Portrait Miniatures, 1500–1850: The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, vol. 1, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024), https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.5.2310.

MLA:

Sobol, Blythe. “Workshop of Jean-Baptiste Isabey, Portrait of Hortense de Beauharnais, ca. 1807–11,” catalogue entry. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Blythe Sobol, and Maggie Keenan. The Starr Collection of Portrait Miniatures, 1500–1850: The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, edited by Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, vol. 1, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024. doi: 10.37764/8322.5.2310.

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

This portrait of Hortense de Beauharnais (1783–1837) elegantly exemplifies the ways in which miniatures were lovingly passed down as signs of affection, esteem, and family ties. Hortense de Beauharnais was born in 1783 to Joséphine Tascher de la Pagerie and Alexandre de Beauharnais, who was executed during the French Revolution. In 1796, Joséphine de Beauharnais married Napoleon Bonaparte, then an officer in the French army.¹ In 1802, Napoleon—by then First Consul of France—arranged his stepdaughter Hortense’s marriage to his brother Louis Bonaparte and, after crowning himself Emperor of France in 1804, appointed them King and Queen of Holland (then under French control) in 1806. This portrait of Hortense as a queen likely dates to the early part of their reign.²

The miniature was produced in the workshop of Jean-Baptiste Isabey, the reigning miniaturist in France at the time.³ Hortense commissioned many portraits of herself from Isabey and his studio; many were given as gifts.⁴ Beyond his celebrity, Isabey was also Hortense’s drawing master, and this relationship granted him access to the French imperial court.⁵ Beginning in 1804, Isabey was deluged with commissions to produce huge numbers of miniatures of Napoleon and Joséphine as diplomatic gifts, alongside the demand for similar portraits by members of the French court. This profitable enterprise was made possible by utilizing a repetitive formula and engaging his students as copyists, enabling Isabey to focus on original works.⁶ His gauzy, romanticized miniatures of both Hortense and her mother, Joséphine, came to exemplify their private image, distinct from their formal court portraits.

In this portrait, Hortense wears a lace-trimmed blue velvet dress in the quasi-medieval style troubadour that she popularized, along with her mother. Her sapphire and diamond parure includes earrings, a necklace, and a tiara. The set bears some resemblance to a parure that had been given or sold by Hortense de Beauharnais to her cousin and close friend Stéphanie de Beauharnais, Grand Duchess of Baden.⁷

Like Hortense’s jewels, the miniature itself was passed down as a family heirloom in various forms. After Hortense’s death, it descended to her niece, Amélie of Leuchtenberg (1812–1873). In a curious turn of events, the miniature was then purchased by another family closely linked to its sitter: the descendants of Auguste-Charles-Joseph de Flahaut de La Billarderie, comte de Flahaut. Flahaut and Hortense engaged in a secret affair from about 1807 to 1815, which led to the birth of a son, Auguste de Morny.⁸ After Flahaut married in 1817, Hortense befriended Madame de Flahaut and gave her a watercolor portrait of herself by Isabey, which the Englishwoman displayed in her bedroom throughout her life.⁹

The Nelson-Atkins miniature remained with the Flahaut family until it was sold after the death of the comte de Flahaut’s granddaughter in 1935.¹⁰ This somewhat unconventional attachment in love and friendship was preserved by the Flahauts in the form of two portraits by Isabey: the Nelson-Atkins miniature they purchased in 1870 and Madame de Flahaut’s watercolor. Both Isabeys were safeguarded together for several generations, demonstrating the appeal of such intimate objects not only as works of art but as records of sentiment and family history.

Notes

1. See Marie-Hélène Baylac, Hortense de Beauharnais (Paris: Perrin, 2016). See also Eleanor P. DeLorme, Josephine: Napeoleon’s Incomparable Empress (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2002).

2. In conversation with Elle Shushan, 2017, Nelson-Atkins curatorial files.

3. The original model for this miniature, if it exists, is unknown. On Isabey, see Cyrille Lécosse, Jean-Baptiste Isabey: Petits Portraits et Grands Desseins (Paris: CTHS Edition, 2018); and François Pupil, ed., Jean-Baptiste Isabey: Portraitiste de l’Europe (1767–1855) (Paris: RMN, 2005).

4. Of her habitual practice of gifting tiny treasures, Hortense herself wrote to a friend, “Small gifts foster friendship. That was said long ago, my dear Egle [sic], but without needing to keep up with what we shall always feel, I send you four little crosses.” Hortense quoted in Marina Kliger, “‘Small Gifts Foster Friendship’: Hortense de Beauharnais, Amateur Art, and the Politics of Exchange in Postrevolutionary France,” in Small Things in the Eighteenth Century: The Political and Personal Value of the Miniature, ed. Beth Fowkes Tobin and Chloe Wigston Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), 204–21.

5. Josephine’s patronage of Isabey, meanwhile, is addressed in Alain Pougetoux, “Josephine as Patron and Her Collection of Paintings,” in The Empress Josephine: Art and Royal Identity, ed. Carol Solomon Kiefer (Amherst, MA: Amherst College, 2005), 93–97.

6. According to Cyril Lécosse, Isabey sometimes completed the faces but more often simply signed his pupils’ completed works. The copyists he employed included his students Jean-Désire Muneret, Jean-François Hollier, Jean-Urbain Guérin, Daniel Saint, and Louis-François Aubry. This quasi-industrial mode of production led to a decline in quality and ensuing complaints from Napoleon. Lécosse, Jean-Baptiste Isabey, 189–94.

7. Sold at Christie’s, Geneva, “Magnificent Jewels including the Alrosa Spectacle Diamond,” May 12, 2021, lots 136–44. According to Christie’s, the parure was described as a “necklace, pendant, earrings, 7 pins and a belt” in Stéphanie’s will. As was typical for such sets, the parure was altered over the years to fit changing tastes. In this case, the belt—worn with the high empire-waist gowns then fashionable at the imperial court—was later remodeled into a bandeau tiara and a bracelet. Lukas Biehler, “‘A Little Piece of History From Napoleon’s Court’: The Beauharnais Jewels,” Christie’s, April 29, 2021, https://www.christies.com/features/The-Beauharnais-Jewels-from-the-court-of-Napoleon-11610-3.aspx. Another sapphire and diamond parure connected to Hortense de Beauharnais is the Orléans parure, which Hortense inherited from Joséphine after the latter’s death in 1814 and then sold to Louis-Philippe, then duc d’Orléans. Some pieces from this set are now displayed in the Galerie d’Apollon at the Louvre, Paris.

8. On Auguste de Morny and the Flahaut family’s 1870 purchase from Amélie of Leuchtenberg, see the Earl of Kerry, ed., The First Napoleon: Some Unpublished Documents from the Bowood Papers (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1925), xix.

9. Earl of Kerry, First Napoleon, 268.

10. Sold at Sotheby’s, London, “The Digby Collections: Catalogue of Gold Snuff Boxes, Watches, Musical Boxes, Objects of Vertu and Fine Portrait Miniatures,” June 21, 1951, lot 73.

Hortense de Beauharnais (1783–1837), Paris, France, by 1811;

Probably inherited by her niece, Amélie of Leuchtenberg, later Empress of Brazil (1812–1873), 1842 [1];

Purchased at her sale, around 1870, by a member of the Digby family, probably Georgina de Flahaut de la Billarderie, marquise de Lavalette (1822–1907), Paris, ca. 1870–1907 [2];

By descent to her niece, Lady Emily Louise Anne Fitzmaurice, later Lady Emily Digby (d. 1939), London, 1907–1939 [3];

By descent to her son, Almarus Edward Digby, Esq. (1889–1950), London, 1939–1950;

Purchased from his posthumous sale, The Digby Collections: Catalogue of Gold Snuff Boxes, Watches, Musical Boxes, Objects of Vertu and Fine Portrait Miniatures, Sotheby’s, London, June 21, 1951, lot 73, as La Duchesse de St. Leu, by Leggatt Brothers, London, probably on behalf of Mr. John W. (1905–2000) and Mrs. Martha Jane (1906–2011) Starr, Kansas City, MO, 1951–1958 [4];

Their gift to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1958.

Notes

[1] The Nelson-Atkins miniature is illustrated in a publication by Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 6th Marquess of Lansdowne, who was styled Earl of Kerry until 1927. The Earl of Kerry, under which title he published his book, The First Napoleon (1925), was a relative of the Digby family members who later sold the miniature to the Starrs in 1951. He wrote of its probable provenance, “The miniature of Queen Hortense is by Isabey, and belonged to Amélie, the daughter of Prince Eugène Beauharnais and wife of Dom Pedro, the Emperor of Brazil. It is probably the portrait which Queen Hortense left by will to her niece (Revue de l’Empire, 1ère année 1842). The miniature was bought about the year 1870, when a sale of some of the Empress Amélie’s effects took place.” The Earl of Kerry, ed., The First Napoleon: Some Unpublished Documents from the Bowood Papers (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1925), xix.

[2] See also note [1]. “The miniature was bought [by a Digby relative] about the year 1870, when a sale of some of the Empress Amélie’s effects took place.” The Earl of Kerry, ed., The First Napoleon, xix. Empress Amélie’s sale has not yet been traced.

The marquise de Lavalette was the daughter of Charles, comte de Flahaut de la Billarderie (1785–1870), former lover of Hortense de Beauharnais, the subject and probable owner of the Nelson-Atkins portrait. The marquise and her husband had no children. As the inheritor of her father’s collection and archives, the marquise undertook the guardianship of her family’s heritage and acquired various objects relating to the comte de Flahaut and Hortense de Beauharnais. After her death, she left her large collection of art and decorative arts, including portrait miniatures, to her niece, Lady Emily Fitzmaurice. See “Héritière du patrimoine et des archives de Charles de Flahaut, [Georgina Gabrielle de Flahaut de La Billarderie] devient, de fait, la garante de sa mémoire.” Archives Nationales, Paris, fonds Flahaut (565 AP), https://www.siv.archives-nationales.culture.gouv.fr/siv/POG/FRAN_POG_05/p-227bg2m94-m5vz5lpr1z10/. See also Gillian Wilson, French Furniture and Gilt Bronzes: Baroque and Régence: Catalogue of the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2008), 142.

[3] While Lady Emily Fitzmaurice was the granddaughter of Charles, comte de Flahaut de la Billarderie and his wife Margaret Mercer Elphinstone (1788–1867), the Nelson-Atkins miniature does not seem to have been inherited by descent from Flahaut, unlike at least one other portrait of Hortense by Isabey, which had been a gift from Hortense to Flahaut’s wife Margaret Mercer Elphinstone. Lady Emily’s brother, Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, then styled Earl of Kerry, wrote of that other Isabey, “The portrait in water-colour by Isabey which forms the subject of our illustration, was a gift from the ex-Queen and always hung in Madame de Flahault’s [sic] bedroom. This and the portrait of her husband by Gerard (p. 16) were destined by Madame de Flahault [sic] for Morny. Owing to his predecease they were left to Madame de Lavalette, from whom they passed respectively to Lady Emily Digby and Lord Fitzmaurice.” The Earl of Kerry, ed., The First Napoleon, 267. As note [2] suggests, the Nelson-Atkins miniature was more likely purchased by Flahaut’s daughter Georgina, “Madame de Lavalette,” out of an interest in that aspect of her family history. Kerry noted, “The illustrations [including that of the Nelson-Atkins portrait of Hortense de Beauharnais] are all taken from portraits and objects in the possession of Flahault’s [sic] descendants.” The Earl of Kerry, ed., The First Napoleon, xvi.

[4] Described in the catalogue as “other fine small Miniature of La Duchesse de St. Leu, probably by Isabey, in a pale blue dress, enameled and pearl-bordered frame, 1 1/2 in.” This provenance is confirmed by the presence of several other miniatures in the Digby sale now in the Starr collection, including “A Good French Miniature by Augustin, called Mme. La Comtesse de Grabowska (née de Béthisy), half-length, full face in white hat and feathers, low-cut white dress with broad purple sash, in a circular ormolu frame, 3 in.” sold in the same lot (see Unknown, Portrait of a Woman, Possibly Anne Julie de Béthisy, Comtesse de Grabowska, late 19th/early 20th century, F58-60/4). The Starrs frequently purchased groupings of miniatures at auction. Archival research has shown that Leggatt Brothers served as purchasing agents for the Starrs. See correspondence between Betty Hogg and Martha Jane Starr, May 15 and June 3, 1950, Nelson-Atkins curatorial files.

The Starr Foundation Collection of Miniatures, The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, December 8, 1972–January 14, 1973, no cat., no. 243, as Duchesse de St. Leu.

The Earl of Kerry, ed., The First Napoleon: Some Unpublished Documents from the Bowood Papers (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1925), pp. xix, 232, (repro.), as “Henriette” (Queen Hortense).

The Digby Collections: Catalogue of Gold Snuff Boxes, Watches, Musical Boxes, Objects of Vertu and Fine Portrait Miniatures (London: Sotheby’s, June 21, 1951), 11, as La Duchesse de St. Leu.

Ross E. Taggart, ed., Handbook of the Collections in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 4th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1959), 265.

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 243, p. 79, (repro.), as Duchess De St. Leu.

Françoise de Bernardy, Flahaut (1785–1870): fils de Talleyrand, père de Morny (Paris: Perrin, 1974), 95.

Beverly Zisla Welber, “A Signed Portrait Miniature,” Muse: Annual of the Museum of Art and Archeology, University of Missouri-Columbia 8, no. 1 (1974): 46.