Enfilade

From the press release (28 August 2024) . . .

Antoine-François Callet, Portrait of the Comte de Cromot, Superintendent of the Comte de Provence, at an easel, accompanied by his two daughters-in-law, 1787, oil on canvas, 78 × 64 inches (San Marino: The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens).

The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens has acquired an ambitious, large-scale masterpiece by 18th-century French portraitist Antoine-François Callet (1741–1823), the official painter of Louis XVI. The work is the fourth in a series of acquisitions made possible by The Ahmanson Foundation.

Painted at the height of the artist’s career, Portrait of the Comte de Cromot, Superintendent of the Comte de Provence, at an easel, accompanied by his two daughters-in-law is a unique Old Master work that contains a painting within a painting. The small landscape on the easel adjacent to the sitter was painted on a separate canvas and signed by the Comte de Cromot himself, known to be an amateur painter, and then inserted into the overall composition by Callet. The complex portrait will go on view in the Huntington Art Gallery this fall as an important counterpart to the institution’s world-class collection of 18th-century French decorative arts, complementing the recent addition of Joseph Hyacinthe François-de-Paule de Rigaud, comte de Vaudreuil by Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, which also became part of the collection through a gift from The Ahmanson Foundation.

“This historically significant work by Antoine-François Callet is an extraordinary addition to our signature portrait collection and will be vital in our interpretive work as we draw connections to our related French holdings,” Huntington President Karen Lawrence said. “We are immensely grateful to The Ahmanson Foundation for their support in strengthening The Huntington’s collection of European art with this masterpiece.”

Antoine-François Callet was born in Paris in 1741. In 1764, at the age of 23, he won the Prix de Rome and completed his artistic education at the Académie de France in Rome. In the late 1770s, he returned to Paris to begin work on a ceiling painting for the Louvre, which earned him admission to the Académie Royale. He received patronage and the protection of King Louis XVI and the monarch’s brothers. As the official painter of Louis XVI, he painted the famous portrait of the king in his coronation robes. Callet was also the First Painter to ‘Monsieur’ (Comte de Provence) and the official painter to the Comte d’Artois, who were the king’s brothers. During the turbulent 18th and 19th centuries, Callet regularly exhibited at the Salon of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

“The portrait of the Comte de Cromot is exceptional both historically and artistically,” said Christina Nielsen, Hannah and Russel Kully Director of the Art Museum at The Huntington. “It has tremendous presence—great not only in scale but also in ambition as it contains four portraits in one: that of the Comte de Cromot, his two daughters-in-law, and the future King Louis XVIII, seen in a roundel on the wall in the background.”

The primary sitter, the Comte de Cromot, was Jules-David Cromot du Bourg, superintendent of finances to the Comte de Provence, who was the brother of Louis XVI and the future king of France. The frame of the portrait of the Comte de Provence is inscribed with the words “Donné par Mr. frère du Roi au Grand Surintendant de ses finances,” acknowledging that the monumental work was commissioned by the future king for the model. The Comte de Cromot died in 1786, which makes the portrait the last representation of this important 18th-century figure. The two daughters-in-law in the painting are Marie Sophie Guillauden du Plessis and Sophie de Barral. “The Comte de Cromot is rendered as an accomplished artist, while his daughters-in-law are pictured reading letters and books and considering drawings, signifying the importance of the arts across the spectrum of intellectual life in French society,” Nielsen said.

Through its partnership with The Ahmanson Foundation, The Huntington has acquired Portrait of José Antonio Caballero, Second Marqués de Caballero, Secretary of Grace and Justice (1807) by Francisco de Goya in 2023; Portrait of Joseph Hyacinthe François-de-Paule de Rigaud, comte de Vaudreuil (ca. 1784) by Vigée Le Brun, the most important female artist of 18th-century France, in 2022; and the monumental Portage Falls on the Genesee (ca. 1839) by Anglo American painter Thomas Cole in 2021.

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On 25 January 2023, the portrait was sold at Christie’s in New York as lot 55 of Remastered: Old Masters from the Collection of J.E. Safra for $201,600, well under its low estimate of $300,000. –CH