(Versailles 1701–1772 Rome)
Portait of Charles-Claude de Flahaut de la Billarderie, Comte d’Angiviller, with a child,
signed and dated lower centre: L. G. Blanchet / pinxt. Rome / 1760,
oil on canvas, 135 x 100 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Paris, beginning of the 20th century;
and thence by descent, private collection, Paris;
sale, Sotheby’s, London, 8 December 2011, lot 253;
sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 29 January 2016, lot 529;
Private collection, New York;
where acquired by the present owner

We are grateful to Domenico Giampà for his help in cataloguing the present painting.

The present portrait belongs to the painter Louis-Gabriel Blanchet’s full maturity. In contrast to portraitists such as Pompeo Batoni, who depicted his subjects in front of the monuments of imperial Rome and alongside celebrated antique sculptures, Blanchet preferred not to linger on such details, but rather exerted all his concentration on the representation of the sitter.

Count d’Angiviller was the last general director of the Bâtiments du Roi. He was a friend of Louis XVI and in 1774 received the prestigious post of Directeur général des Bâtiments du Roi, Arts, Jardins et Manufactures de France. In this role, he was responsible for administering all the properties of the king, including Versailles and its park, Fontainbleau, the Louvre and the gardens of the Tuileries, and the castles of Vincennes, Chambord and Blois. He was also in charge of the royal productions of Gobelins, the Savonnerie and Sèvres, and he was a protector of the Académie d’Architecture. Consequently, he became taste-maker for the arts in France. Among the most important projects executed during the reign of Louis XVI are the King’s library by the architect Gabriel, the complete replanting of the park and gardens of Versailles and the Odeon Theatre in Paris. As a promoter of history painting and the neoclassical movement in France, Count d’Angiviller commissioned the Oath of the Horatii of Jacques-Louis David in 1784 (Musée du Louvre, Paris). One of his greatest merits was increasing the collections of the Crown with the purchase of over two-hundred and fifty old master paintings and his decision to present the works in a permanent display, accessible to the public, by transforming the Grand Galerie of the Louvre into a museum. The Revolution put a stop to this important project which was only brought to completion in 1793. In the aftermath of the storming of the Bastille, the count took refuge first in Spain and then in Germany where he died in 1809 (cfr. J.S. De Sacy, Le comte d’Argiviller: dernier directeur général des bâtiments du roi, Paris 1953).

Louis-Gabriel Blanchet was a successful portraitist who portrayed many of the illustrious figures of his age: he was commissioned to paint the portraits of the Stuart Royal family, today conserved in the National Portrait Gallery, London and Holyrood House, Edinburgh. He painted the Portrait of Giovanni Paolo Panini (Private collection, formerly Sotheby’s, London, 6 July 2016, lot 37) and in his Roman studio he received sitters such as the architect William Chambers, Baron Henry Willoughby and the young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart while he was on his first Italian sojourn.