Jean-Baptiste Isabey

Maria Luisa Leopoldine Franziska Theresia of Lorraine-Habsburg (1791–1847), Archduchess of Austria, Impératrice des Français as the second consort of Napoléon Ier and, after the French Emperor’s definitive fall from power, Duchess of Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla;

By inheritance to her son by her second husband, Graf Adan Albert von Neipperg (1775–1829);

Count Guglielmo Alberto von Neipperg, called Prinz von Montenuovo (1819–1895), Parma and Vienna;

Thence by inheritance to his son;

Count Alfred Adam Wilhelm Johann Maria von Neipperg, called Fürst von Montenuovo (1854–1927), Vienna;

Private collection, Switzerland;

With Römer Fine Art, Zurich;

From whom acquired by the present owner.

F. Ritter, in Der Wiener Congress: Culturgeschichte, die bildenden Künste und das Kunstgewerbe, Theater – Musik in der Zeit von 1800 bis 1825, E. Leisching (ed.), Vienna 1898, pp. 132-134, reproduced plate XXIII;

Paris, Musée de l’Orangerie, Souvenirs du Roi de Rome, exposition organisée à l’occasion du centenaire de sa mort, 1932, under cat. no. 17;

M. Praz, L’Ameublement: psychologie et évolution de la décoration intérieure, Milan and Paris 1964, p. 191, reproduced fig. 158;

[O. Lefuel], "N", Connaissance des Arts, no. 177 (November 1966), pp. 84-85, reproduced;

C. Baulez, "La Toilette de l’Impératrice Marie-Louise, le berceau du Roi de Rome et Henri-Victor Roguier," in Antologia di Belle Arti, nos. 1 and 2 (June 1977), pp. 194, 200;

J. Baillio, "Jean-Baptiste Isabey (1767–1855), chroniqueur de la naissance du Roi de Rome," in L’Oeil, no. 472 (June 1995), pp. 38-41, 42-43, reproduced figs. 2, 7-10;

S. Laveissière, Prud’hon ou le rêve du bonheur, exhibition catalogue, Dijon 1997, p. 202, cat. no. 28;

E. Caude, "La venue au monde des héritiers dynastiques," in La Pourpre et l’exil: L’Aiglon (1811– 1832) et le Prince impérial (1856–1879), exhibition catalogue, Paris 2004, pp. 34, 61, cat. no. 37;

The Arts of France from François I^er to Napoléon I^er, exhibition catalogue, New York 2005, pp. 361, 414, cat. no. 163, reproduced;

E.P. DeLorme, Josephine and the Arts of the Empire, Los Angeles 2005, pp. 65-66, reproduced fig. 51;

O. Novel-Kammerer, "Quelques questions sur l’évolution du goût de l’Empire," in 1810, La politique de l’amour. Napoléon I^er et Marie-Louise à Compiègne, exhibition catalogue, Paris 2010, p. 136, reproduced fig. 170;

C. Beyeler and V. Cochet, Enfance impérialé: le Roi de Rome, fils de Napoléon, exhibition catalogue, Dijon 2011, cat. no. 43, pp. 112-113 and cover page, reproduced;

V. Cochet, "Le salon jaune de Joséphine: la sauvegarde d’un décor déraciné," in Revue du Louvre (La Revue des Musées de France), 2014, pp. 71-72, no. 5, reproduced fig. 9;

A. Dion-Tenenbaum, "D’un Empire à l’autre: Les Tuileries de 1800 à 1851," in Les Tuileries: Grands décors d’un palais disparu, Paris 2016, pp. 87 and 107, reproduced;

J. de Varax, "Aux marches du palais: L’histoire du palais des Tuileries se confond avec celle de la France," in Le Figaro Histoire, December 2016 - January 2017, p. 119, cat. no. 29, reproduced;

S. Cordier, Napoléon : la maison de l’Empereur, exhibition catalogue, Montreal 2018, p. 32, cat. no. 15, reproduced.

Vienna, Österreichisches Museum für Kunst und Industrie, Wiener Congress Ausstellung, January - February 1896, no. 392 (incorrectly titled "Die Taufe des Königs von Rom");

New York, Wildenstein, The Arts of France from François Ier to Napoléon Ier, 26 October 2005 - 6 January 2006, no. 163;

Musée National du Château de Fontainebleau, Enfance impérialé: le Roi de Rome, fils de Napoléon, 26 February - 23 May 2011, no. 43;

Montréal, Musée des Beaux-Arts; Richmond, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; Kansas City, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Napoléon, art et vie de cour au Palais impérial, 10 February - 3 March 2019, no. 15.

The composition of this exquisitely preserved watercolor represents an event that followed the birth of Napoléon François Joseph Charles Bonaparte (1811-1832), King of Rome, later Napoleon II and Duke of Reichstadt, at the Tuileries Palace. The birth of a son solidified all of Napoleon’s dynastic ambitions and Archduchess Marie-Louise of Austria was the woman to provide this most coveted of male heirs to the Emperor of France, following his failed union with Joséphine. The scene depicted by Isabey takes place on the morning of March 20, 1811, in Marie-Louise's room, the former petit cabinet of Louis XIV, overlooking the Tuileries garden. The young sovereign is lying in the large state bed that she had inherited from Napoleon’s first spouse, Joséphine, and is enveloped by the richness of decoration that the room contains, with red satin, gilt bronze and ponceau-red damask silk surrounding her. Isabey has theatrically lit the room with a strong shaft of daylight, which streams into the center of the composition from the garden-facing window, contrasting dramatically with the left foreground which he leaves in relative darkness.

At the center of the composition Marie-Louise receives the little King of Rome from the hands of Napoleon, who is wearing the uniform of colonel of the Imperial Guard and the ribbon of the Legion of Honor. Behind him stand a group of women all of whom epitomize in exceptional fashion the sophistication and elegance of their social standing. First, directly behind Napoleon and holding a cushion, is the Comtesse de Montesquiou-Fezensac (1765-1835), governess of the Children of France and wife of the First Chamberlain. To her right is Napoleon’s mother, Maria Letizia Ramolino Bonaparte (1750-1836), and successively the Emperor’s favorite sister Pauline, Princess Borghese (1780-1825), and two of his sisters-in-law: Julie, Queen of Spain (1771-1845), and Hortense, Queen of Holland (1783-1837), the daughter of the former Empress Joséphine and wife of Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland. To Marie-Louise’s left, arranging her bed linen, is her dame d’honneur, the Duchess of Montebello (1782-1856). Next to her, holding a dish and basin is perhaps one of the baby’s two assistant governesses, the Countess of Boubers-Bernatre or the Baroness of Mesgrigny, whilst further to the left of the composition, seen in profile and dressed in white, with her arms crossed under her chest, stands the wet nurse to the infant King of Rome, Mme Auchard, née Marie Molliex-Gozé. Finally, in the foreground amongst the shadows are two of the child’s three premières femmes, Mesdames Ballant, Darnaud and Soufflot, who were appropriately known as the Femmes rouges, due to the distinctive red uniforms they wore when they were in attendance.

If the importance and grandeur of the event was not suitably demonstrated by this extensive entourage of family, courtiers and servants, the room itself and the lavish detail that Isabey so precisely conveys can leave the viewer in no doubt. Sumptuously renovated and refurnished by the imperial architects Fontaine and Percier, the present work includes the most important elements from the gilt-silver, burgau mother-of-pearl and lapis lazuli wedding toilette that the City of Paris gave to Marie-Louise on August 15, 1810. This magnificent ensemble, one of the glories of French goldsmithery, was commissioned by the prefect of the Seine, Nicolas Frochot, and was a work of collaboration between several artists and craftsmen, including the goldsmith Jean-Baptiste-Claude Odiot and the sculptor and bronzier Pierre PhilippeThomire, based on the drawings of Pierre Paul Prud’hon and Adrien Louis Marie Cavelier and wax models by the sculptor Henri Victor Roguier. Besides the splendid and highly ornate gold and silverware can also be included an exquisite carpet produced in 1808 by Jean Sallandrouze, whose workshops were in Aubusson and Paris. The central part of this very fine example of French textile art, recognizable by its decoration of swans surrounding a peacock with outstretched feathers, is today preserved at Malmaison.

Beyond the splendor of the room and the symbolism and pageantry of Isabey’s depiction also lies a far more human event. Isabey skillfully evokes a moment when Napoleon, the military genius and tyrant of Europe, is able to demonstrate the human feelings that continue to inhabit him. He is represented neither as a conquering hero, nor as a miracle-working king, but as a proud and caring husband and father. In fact, the tranquil scene that Isabey depicts for us is a far cry from the reality of the King of Rome’s birth, which by all accounts was a painful labor of some twelve hours that almost cost Marie-Louise her life and was only brought to an end by forceful and timely medical intervention.

The provenance of this important and rare work of art is almost as distinguished as those people depicted within it. Marie-Louise bequeathed the watercolor to one of the three children she had with her second husband, Field Marshal Count Adam Adalbert von Neipperg (1775-1829). After Guglielmo Alberto von Neipperg’s death in 1895, the watercolor was inherited by his son Alfred, who lent it in 1896 to the major retrospective exhibition of the Congress of Vienna (see Exhibited). When one couples this with the refinement and beauty of the watercolor’s workmanship it becomes clear that there are very few works of comparable beauty and importance by the artist, which is of the same quality of his enamel portraits of Napoléon and Marie-Louise in the Schatzkammer of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The famous 1815 monochrome work depicting The Congress of Vienna,¹ in the Royal Collection, which was acquired by George IV directly from Isabey in 1820, is larger in size and of equal refinement, however the present work is a crucial record, both of the First Empire as well as for the history of interior decoration, costume and watercolor painting in France and therefore cannot be compared with any work by the artist to appear on the open market in living memory.

^1. Windsor, The Royal Collection, 13025 RCIN 451893. A print by Jean Godfrey of this scene after Isabey is included in the present sale as lot 40.