The Gentileschi Effect

The identity of the sitter in this work, Monsieur de Fontaine, is recorded in the memoirs of Guillaume de Lasalle de Louisenthal, who notes that the painting was part of an inheritance from an aunt, Madame de Fontaine, who left him her entire estate, including substantial properties in Nancy and Paris. When Lasalle de Louisenthal acquired Schloss Dagstuhl, then in the Palatinate, part of the newly founded Kingdom of Bavaria, he brought the painting there and it remained in the family at the Schloss until the estate was sold by his last male descendant in 1955. According to Lasalle de Louisenthal, his aunt (and uncle, the sitter) heralded from Nancy, the capital of the Duchy of Lorraine, which had been awarded to the former Polish King Stanislas Leszczyński, father-in-law of Louis XV, in the Treaty of Vienna of 1737. Despite the formality of his powdered wig, Fontaine is presented as a young and engaging man, his visage marked by a distinctive cleft in his chin and slight smile which adds interest and charm to his good looks. Perhaps the most notable features of this portrait, however, are the beautifully rendered textures of Fontaine’s luxurious costume, from the soft red velvet of his coat with its lush white fur lining to the delicate and frothy lace at his cuffs and neck, all set against a white silk waistcoat richly embroidered with red flowers and black speckles in emulation of ermine fur. These embellishments seem to be a deliberate homage on the part of Fontaine to Lorraine’s Polish duke, suggesting that he was perhaps a courtier: the red poppy is a favorite Polish emblem, while the ermine-fur patterning refers to the duke’s royal status.

The artist responsible for the painting, Marianne Loir, was an extremely skillful painter of wealthy and primarily aristocratic clients. Loir’s family provided her with an impressive artistic pedigree. The Loirs were active Parisian silversmiths since the seventeenth century, Marianne’s father Nicolas Loir (1624–1779) was a painter and engraver, and her brother Alexis III Loir (1712–1785) was a highly regarded pastellist and sculptor, who also specialized in portraiture. Little is known about Marianne’s life, and even the precise dates of her birth and death are uncertain. In 1737 and again in 1738 she received payments for portraits of the duc de Bourbon, the son of the prince de Condé and a cousin of the king, suggesting that by that date, she had established a significant reputation. She was still working more than thirty years later, when she executed her last known signed and dated work was executed in 1769. Loir was trained by a distinguished French academic painter, Jean-François de Troy, and may have spent some time in Rome. That sojourn may have taken place between the mid-1730s and 1740s, when there is no record of any artistic activity by her in Paris and when her teacher was serving as director of the Académie de France in Rome and her brother was a student there. Following her return to France, Loir had an itinerant career, often moving together with her brother, and was principally employed in painting portraits of the provincial nobility, such as her double portrait of Jean and Bonne de la Croix Laval (Musée Lyonnais des Arts Décoratifs, Lyon) and Marie-Charles-Auguste Grimaldi (Musée des Beaux-Arts et d’Histoire, Saint-Lô). Her most accomplished is generally considered to be of the Marquise du Châtelet (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux), in which she reveals a remarkable delicacy of touch and mastery of color. Scholars believe that Loir lived for a time in the south of France. This theory is based on records of portraits she painted during the 1760s for patrons in Pau and Toulouse and her election to the Academy of Marseilles in 1762. Only two paintings by the artist are in American museum collections: the Presumed Portrait of Madame Geoffrin (National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington) and the Portrait of a Man Sitting at his Desk (Portland Art Museum, Portland, Washington).

The painting retains its original carved and gilded Louis XV frame.

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