François-Xavier Fabre Montpellier 1766 - 1837

The duc and the duchesse de Feltre, Neuwiller-les-Savernes, 1813; 
Thence by descent to their son, Edgar Clarke, duc de Feltre (1799-1852);
Thence by descent to his niece, Henriette Auriane de Montesquiou-Fezenac, vicomtesse de Goyon (1813-1887); 
Thence by descent in 1927 to her nephew, M. de Goyon  (presumably Auguste de Goyon, 4th duc de Feltre (1884-1957);
With Wildenstein, New York, from whom purchased by the present owner.

Paris, Musée Napoléon, Salon of 1810, no. 295 ("Portrait du fils aîné de S. Ex. le duc de Feltre, fait à Florence en 1802");
Roslyn Harbor, New York, Nassau County Museum of Art, Faces & Figures, September 21, 1997 - January 4, 1998, pp. 9-10, note 4 p. 18, pp.54-55, reproduced fig. 15 p. 100 (reproduced in reverse).

P. Marmottan, "La Jeunesse du peintre Fabre", in Gazette
des Beaux-Arts, XV, no. 2, February 1927, pp. 111-112;
G. Wildenstein, "Table alphabétique des portraits peints, sculptés, dessinés, gravés et exposés à Paris au Salon entre 1800 et
1826", in Gazette des Beaux-Arts, LXI, January 1963, p. 34;
P. Bordes, "Les Peintres Fabre et Benvenuti et la cour d'Elisa Bonaparte", in Actes du Colloque: Florence et la France "Rapports sous la Revolution et l'Empire (Florence, 1977), Florence and Paris 1979, p. 195;
L. Pellicer, Le Portrait  à travers les collections du Musée Fabre, XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles, Montpellier, Musée Fabre, 1979, p. 69;
L. Pellicer, "Le peintre François-Xavier Fabre (1766-1837)", (unpublished, PhD. dissertation, Université de Paris IV-La Sorbonne), 1982, III, pp. 799-800, no. A71, reproduced;
L. Pellicer, François-Xavier Fabre, Spoleto, Palazzo-Racani-Arroni, 1988, pp. 10, 11, 48, no. 20;
M. Hillaire, Le Paysage de la Raison, De la Nature: Paysages de Poussin à Courbet dans les collections du Musée Fabre, Montpellier 1996, p. 29, reproduced;
L. Pellicer, "Sublime miroir qui dit la vérité", François-Xavier Fabre peintre et collectionneur, Montpellier 2000, p. 84, reproduced p. 25. 

This charming and beautifully painted portrait depicts the three year old Edgar Clarke, son of the French general Henri- Jacques-Guillaume Clarke (1765-1818), comte d'Hunebourg and duc de Feltre.  It is the first of the portraits that Fabre painted for Clarke, who would become an important patron.  The artist has painted the general’s young and carefree son chasing a butterfly through a clearing in the woods where he has been gathering flowers.  The parallel subject of the painting is childhood innocence and parents’ aspirations, as is further suggested by the poem written on a piece of paper, addressed to the boy’s parents, whose presence is suggested by the gentleman’s hat and lady’s shawl that lie nearby:

Aux auteurs de mes Jours.

Quand serai grand, de fleurs puissé-je ainsi semer
Tous les momens de votre vie;
Soucis font mal, dit’on, pour vous en préserver
Je les détruis dans la prairie.¹

This explains the depiction of the marigolds that Edgar treds upon, evidently meant to represent the worries that he hopes to spare his parents.  The portrait seems to have been a popular as well as a family success, as attested to in a letter from General Clarke to the artist in 1806:

Il suffit de regarde mon bel Edgar pour que ma pensée se reporte vers celui qui l’a peint avec autant de talents que de vérité.  Ce n’est pas sans éprouver un extrême regret que Mme Clarke n’ait point été peint par vous.  Quand le tableau d’Edgar était chez le doreur pour racommoder [sic] la bordure, on faisait queue a la porte pour le voir. J’avais un extrême regret de ce que vous n’aviez point permis qu’on le mit au Salon. ²

The artist remained a favorite with the family, and both of the oversights lamented by Clarke in his correspondence were later readdressed.  Fabre painted a portrait of the duc as Minister of War (commissioned by the state and now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes), and a grand, full-length portrait of the duchesse with her children, including Edgar dressed in the more martial attire of a cavalier (Musée Marmottan, Paris).  Both of these portraits were exhibited at the Salon of 1810, together with this painting, the duc having apparently won over the artist to his point of view with his enthusiasm. 

As the signature and date indicate, the present portrait was painted in Florence in 1802, when General Clarke was acting as French minister to short-lived the Kingdom of Etruria, which Napoleon had created to compensate the Bourbons for their loss of the Duchy of Parma.  Fabre had settled there in 1793 and had become part of the international artistic community there, painting portraits of visiting grand tourists, as well as acting as an occasional dealer.³  Clarke, a Frenchman of Irish ancestry, had become close to Napoleon during the Revolution, and had remained one of his closest advisors, becoming the Mister of War in 1807, and was elevated to the peerage the following year.⁴  He was able to finesse the change of regime during the restoration, and in fact was again appointed to the post of Minister of War under the Bourbons.  His son Edgar followed in his father’s footsteps, joining the army and becoming a supporter of the Bourbon dynasty.  

1 "To the authors of my days
When I am grown up, of the flowers that I have already been able to plant
All the moments of your life;
Worries are hurtful, they say, and to protect you from them
I destroy them in the meadow."

2  "It’s enough to look at my fine Edgar for my mind to turn towards [the portrait] that you painted with as much skill as veracity.   It is not without coming to an extreme regret that Mrs Clarke had never been painted by you.  When the portrait of Edgar was with the framer to be fitted for its frame, there was a line at the shop door to see it.  I was extremely sorry that you would never allow us to exhibit it at the Salon."

3  Fabre was also a significant collector, and his works of art formed the nucleus of the Musée Fabre in his hometown of Montpellier. 

4  He was given the title of comte d'Hunebourg in 1808 and then duc de Feltre in 1809.  Edgar succeeded his father to the dukedom in 1818.