Henri Beaubrun | Charles Beaubrun

In the sitter's family since its execution:

François de Malortie and his spouse Anne de Sarrau;

Their son, Jacques-François de Malortie, Marquis of Boudeville (1665-1729);

His daughter, Marie-Anne, Countess of Hombourg (1693-1774), spouse of Antoine-François de Gaude de Martainville;

Their daughter, Marie-Thérèse (1725-1807), spouse of Philippe-Charles Vogt d’Hunolstein (1719-1790);

Their son, Philippe-Antoine Vogt d’Hunolstein (1750-1830);

Hi son , Félix Vogt d’Hunolstein (1778-1838);

His son, Paul Vogt d’Hunolstein ((1804-1892);

His son, Léopold Vogt d'Hunolstein (1830-1903);

His daughter, Hélène Vogt d’Hunolstein (1859-1904), spouse of Duke Arthur-Casimir de Mortemart (1856-1926);

Their son, François de Rochechouart de Mortemart, Princ of Tonnay-Charente (1909-1938);

His son, Louis-Victor de Rochechouart, Marquis of Mortemart (1909-1938);

His son, Charles-Louis de Rochechouart, Count of Mortemart (1933-2021);

Thence by descent;

Collection of the Rochechouart de Mortemart Family.

These two very elegant portraits of François de Malortie and his wife Anne de Sarrau are the work of Henri and Charles Beaubrun.

Born in Amboise, cousins Henri and Charles Beaubrun rapidly gained the trust of Anne of Austria, Queen of France, and were favoured with commissions to portray her when pregnant and later surrounded by her children. Subsequently, Maria Theresa of Spain also entrusted them with painting the portrait of her son. As portraitists to the courts of Louis XIII and later Louis XIV, the cousins portrayed many members of the nobility.

The portraits of François de Malortie and Anne de Sarrau, who is shown with the attributes of the goddess Diana, exhibit the typical characteristics of the Beaubrun cousins’ approach to painting: the models are posed in front of a landscape, attired in elaborate drapery and embroidery described with a fine brushstroke.

François de Malortie’s various titles included Seigneur de Villars, de Villiers, de Montebourg, d'Heudebourg, de Mesnil-Néry and de Prestol. In 1664, he married Anne Sarrau, who had been widowed by her first husband François de Quièvremont (or Quatremont). She was an active participant in the Fronde, the rebellion organized by the Chevalier de Rohan, which united members of the Protestant nobility in Normandy who opposed the centralization of the monarchy initiated by Richelieu and continued by Mazarin. Suspected of poisoning both her first and second husbands, she was imprisoned in Fort-l’Evêque but released sometime later for lack of proof. She was finally condemned to death after being tried for her part in the Republican revolt. She was beheaded in front of the Bastille in 1674, at the age of thirty-eight.