Attributed to Alexander Kucharski

Collection Alain Bancel;

His sale, Piasa, Paris, 21 May 2003, lot 367 (as Attributed to Antoine François Callet);

Where acquired.

This composition reprises a portrait of Marie-Antoinette painted by Alexander Kucharski between 1789 and 1790. The original painting, which had as a pendant a portrait of King Louis XVI, belonged to the Comte de Provence (the future King Louis XVIII), who kept it in his study in the Tuileries (Sotheby's sale, Monaco, 20–21 June 1987, lot 407). Although already well integrated into the French aristocracy, Kucharski succeeded Elisabeth Vigée-Le Brun as Marie-Antoinette’s painter when she was exiled in 1789. He made many portraits of the queen and the dauphin, in oil, in pastel and in miniature. Neil Jeffares has also identified a gouache identically replicating the present portrait of Queen Marie-Antoinette (see N. Jeffares, Dictionary of pastellists before 1800, online edition no. J.438.168).

Her face turned to the left, Marie-Antoinette holds herself proudly, wearing a satin dress under the royal cloak trimmed with ermine. Later, Kucharski would paint the queen in mourning, at the Temple prison.