The second son - portraits of Louis d'Orléans, duc de Nemours

Attributed to Léon Jan van Ysendyck, 1835.

By Michel Martin Drolling. This is usually dated 1835 on the internet, but I think it more likely 1825, when he would have been eleven.

From the Album du Bal costumé donnée par S.A.R. Madame, Duchesse de Berry le 2 mars 1829 aux appartements des Enfants de France aux Tuileries,
colored lithograph after Eugéne Lami, 1829.

Louis-Philippe, duc d'Orléans en uniforme de colonel-général des Hussards, et de ses fils le duc de Chartres et le duc de Nemours, by Louis Hersent, circa 1830.

Le duc de Nemours et le maréchal Gérard dans la tranchée de la citadelle d'Anvers, décembre 1832, by Victor-Amédée Faure, 1837.
The artist, Faure, was the brother of my wife's great-great-great-great-grandfather.

Le roi Louis-Philippe entouré de ses cinq fils sortant par la grille d'honneur du château de Versailles après avoir passé une revue militaire 
dans les cours, 10 juin 1837, by Horace Vernet, 1848. Left to right: François, prince de Joinville; Antoine, duc de Montpensier; Ferdinand-
Philippe, duc d'Orléans; Louis-Philippe; Louis, duc de Nemours; Henri, duc d'Aumale.

By Franz Xaver Winterhalter, 1939.

Miniature by Sir William Ross, 1840. 

Marriage of the duc and duchesse de Nemours in the chapel of the château de Saint-Cloud, 27 April 1840, by Félix-Henri-Emmanuel Philippoteaux, 1847.

The couple surrounded by his parents and family, including Léopold I, King of the Belgians; he was married to Louise d'Orléans, eldest daughter of Louis-Philippe.

By Franz Xaver Winterhalter, 1843.

 In a costume worn to a ball at Buckingham Palace, 6 June 1845, watercolor by Eugéne Lami, 1845.

1870.

Circa 1880s.

Circa 1890s.

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Louis Charles Philippe Raphaël d'Orléans, duc de Nemours (25 October 1814, Paris – 26 June 1896, Versailles), second son of Louis-Philippe, King of the French, and his wife Marie-Amélie de Bourbon-Siciles. Born at the Palais Royal during the first year of the Bourbon Restoration, at the age of twelve he was nominated colonel of the first regiment of chasseurs. And after his father had assumed the throne, in 1830 - only sixteen - he was made a chevalier of the Ordre du Saint-Esprit and entered the Chambre des Pairs. The following year he was nominated to become the first king of the Belgians, a prize which would go to his brother-in-law Leopold, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. He fought in Algeria on three separate occasions - 1836, 1837, 1841 - as a commander during the latter two. He also made official visits to other royal courts - particularly that of Great Britain - during the 1830s and '40s. In 1840, he married Victoire of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha - niece of Léopold, King of the Belgians, first cousin of both Queen Victoria and Prince Albert - at the château de Saint-Cloud. They would have four children. After the revolution of 1848, and his father's abdication, he joined the extended Orléans family in England. His great aim in the first decade of exile - especially after the death of his father in 1850 - was to broker a reconciliation between the two branches of the House of Bourbon, something he saw as necessary if there were to be any hope of restoring a French monarchy. Negotiations continued until 1857, but were ultimately fruitless. In that same year, his wife died after giving birth to their fourth child; her husband never remarried. In 1871, after the fall of the Second Empire, the exile imposed on the french princes was lifted and his rank in the army was restored. After his retirement, he continued to act as president of the Red Cross until 1886, when the government imposed new restrictions on the princes of the blood and he withdrew from Parisian society. He died ten years later at the age of eighty-one, having outlived his wife, a daughter, and almost all of his siblings. He was interred in the necropolis of the Orléans family, the Chapelle royale de Dreux.

Louise, Queen of the Belgians - two miniatures by Sir William Ross.

Louise d'Orléans (Louise-Marie Thérèse Charlotte Isabelle; 3 April 1812, Palermo – 11 October 1850, Ostend), French princess and first Queen of the Belgians as the second wife of King Léopold I. The eldest daughter of the future Louis-Philippe I, King of the French and his wife Marie-Amélie de Bourbon-Siciles, she married the King of the Belgians at the Château de Compiègne in 1832; she was twenty, he was twenty-two years her senior. Since Léopold was a Protestant, there were two wedding ceremonies, Catholic and Calvinist.

1840. This is actually a reduced copy by Magdalena Ross, younger sister of Sir William, made for Queen Victoria.

Léopold's first wife, Princess Charlotte of Wales, had died in 1817 from complications a day after the birth of a stillborn son; he was said to have never quite recovered from the loss. Although never faithful to his second wife, Léopold respected her and the marriage was a harmonious one. Louise was of a shy nature and was never comfortable in her public role, but she was popular with the Belgian court due to her kindness and generosity.

Engraving of Ross' three-quarter length miniature, the Queen posed in the garden at Laeken. I believe the original is now in a private collection.

Léopold was the uncle to both Queen Victoria and Prince Albert - who were, of course, first cousins - and the Belgian couple was very close to their British relations. Louise's family was as well; Queen Victoria was welcoming and most supportive when, after the revolution of 1848, the Orléans royals fled to England.

1846.

The royal couple had four children, including the infamous King Léopold II, the scourge of the Congo, and the tragic Charlotte, known to history as Empress Carlota of Mexico. Queen Louise died of tuberculosis at Ostend at the age of only thirty-eight.

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The Death of Queen Louise-Marie, by Jozef Meganck, circa 1850.

Her final letter to her husband, written not long before her death:

Dear, dear friend,

This will shall be given to you when I shall be no longer, when my heart, this heart which will never have beaten except for you, shall have ceased to beat, when my eyes, which so loved to contemplate you, will have been closed by death, and my soul alone shall be able to watch over you, when, finally, I shall have no more hope of seeing you again, except in that unknown world, the object of your concerns and your wishes, where, I hope, God will grant us the grace of being eternally reunited. May you find, in the expression of my last wishes, and be able to guess, beyond words, a meagre part of the affection and the gratitude I feel towards you, and which no human language will ever be able to express. May God take charge of the debt of my gratitude and thank you for your kindness towards me, by blessing you and protecting you in all things as my heart desires and as I ask Him without ceasing. May you be happy that I have been happy because of you and close to you. May you be loved, appreciated, cherished, admired, I was almost going to say adored, by many, as you have been by me. May your children be always for you a source of joy and consolation. May your death be sweet like that of the just man and your last moments made beautiful by the memory of all the good you have done to me and to others. May you, in eternity, enjoy that immaterial happiness, without limits, for which your soul, more than any other, was created, and may I be able to serve you, you and those you have loved, or, at least, see you from afar in that blessed eternity and have the certitude of your happiness, even without sharing it. These, dear friend, are my last and dearest wishes, for there is not a beat of my heart nor a thought of my soul which is not yours and for you. My affection for you, that affection which was, I can say, the life of my life, the motive and the essence of my existence here below, must also, I sense, be immortal, like the soul God gave me to adore Him, to serve Him, to pray Him and to appreciate His benefits and must, like it, survive this body of mud. Whatever the moment when almighty God may call me to Him, and whatever anguish, which only the thought of being separated from you may cause me to feel, I can only bless His name, adore His decrees, submit myself to them and thank Him for the happiness, so great and so little made for this earth, which He granted me by uniting me to you. And whether my life is long or short, I will always have lived long enough if I was at all good for you, even if only for an instant. 

The tomb of Léopold and Louise in the royal crypt which is situated in the church of Notre-Dame de Laeken.

The church, near the royal family's official residence outside of Brussles, the Château de Laeken, was built in memory of Queen Louise.

People in rooms I

Louis-Philippe, duc de Valois, au berceau, by Nicolas Bernard Lépicié, 1774.

The duc de Chartres (later the duc d'Orléans, later still known as Philippe Égalité) gazes at his first-born son, one day to be King Louis-Philippe.

Lépicié has also included a portrait of the Orléans' young black servant, Scipion.

Die Sentimentale, by Johann Peter Hasenclever, circa 1846-47.

The family of Arent Anthoni Roukens, by Willem Joseph Laquy, 1786.

 The battle-painter, Jørgen Sonne, in his studio, by Ditlev Blunck, circa 1826.

The baptism of Princess Beatrice in the private chapel at Buckingham Palace, 16 June 1857, by Egron Sellif Lundgren, 1857.

Princess Beatrice was the youngest child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, portrayed here surrounded by their other children.

The child's godparents were her maternal grandmother, the Duchess of Kent; her eldest sister; and the latter's fiancé, Prince Friedrich of Prussia.

Marriage of Léopold I, King of the Belgians, and Louise d’Orléans, Château de Compiègne, 9 August 1832, by Joseph-Désiré Court, circa 1832.

Princess Louise was the eldest daughter of Louis-Philippe and Queen Marie Amélie.

Two ladies and an officer seated at tea, unknown artist, circa 1715.

The Art Gallery of Jan Gildemeester, by Adriaan de Lelie, circa 1794-95.

Among the many paintings covering the walls, one of the most noticeable is Gerard ter Borch's Woman Reading a Letter.

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Bonus: Lépicié's sketch of the infant duc de Valois, a study for the painting at the beginning of this post.

Years of marriage, years of exile - portraits of the duc and duchesse d'Aumale

The duchesse d'Aumale, by James Sant, circa 1855.

The duc d'Aumale, by James Sant, circa 1855.

Henri Eugène Philippe Louis d'Orléans, duc d'Aumale (16 January 1822, Paris - 7 May 1897, Lo Zucco, Sicily), fifth son of King Louis-Philippe I of the French and Queen Marie Amélie. At the age of eight years old, only three weeks after his father was proclaimed king, he inherited a vast fortune, including the Château de Chantilly and other estates, from his godfather, Louis Henri de Bourbon, the last prince de Condé. At the age of seventeen he entered the army with the rank of a captain of infantry, and later distinguished himself during the French invasion of Algeria; in 1847 he became lieutenant-general and was appointed Governor-General of Algeria, a position he held until his father's abdication the following February.

Detail of above.

By Joseph-Nicolas Robert-Fleury, 1831.

By Winterhalter, 1840.

Miniature by François Meuret, after Winterhalter, after circa 1840.

On 25 November 1844, in Naples, he married Maria Carolina Auguste di Borbone, principessa delle Due Sicilie (26 April 1822, Vienna - 6 December 1869, Twickenham), the only surviving child of Prince Leopold of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, Prince of Salerno and his wife (and niece) Archduchess Maria Clementina of Austria, daughter of Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor. The bride and groom were first cousins; her father was the brother of Queen Marie Amélie. There was a shortage of marriageable Catholic princesses at the time, and Maria Carolina - called "Lina" from birth - had had several suitors. Typically, the union wasn't a love match; the groom was unenthusiastic, but his parents forced the issue. The couple would nonetheless form a bond of mutual respect, and by her kindness and charm, she would gain the love of her adopted family.

Detail of above.

The duchesse as an infant, unknown miniaturist, circa 1822.

Watercolor by Josef Kriehuber, 1842.

By Franz Schrotzberg, 1842.

Miniature by François Meuret, circa 1845.

The miniature by Meuret has been set into a fabric and gilt metal casket.

Miniature by John Simpson, after Meuret, 1849.

Miniature by François Meuret, 1846.

Miniature of the duchesse with the prince de Condé and with the duc de Guise on her lap, by Sir William Ross, circa 1854-55.

The duchesse d'Aumale would give birth seven times, but the story of her children is a tragic one. A daughter and two sons were stillborn, another son would only live for a month, a fourth son would only live for three months. Her eldest son, Louis, prince de Condé, having been in ill-health, began a long sea voyage in 1866, at the age of twenty. At first, the journey - through Egypt, to Ceylon, and on to Australia - produced the hoped for improvement in his health but, later, his condition rapidly deteriorated, and he died in Sydney. At the news, his mother plunged into a deep depression from which she never fully recovered. After a long illness, she died of tuberculosis three years later at the age of forty-seven. Finally, three years after that, the couple's only surviving child, François, duc de Guise, died at the age of eighteen.

Detail of above.

Studio of Winterhalter, after circa 1843. Winterhalter painted many portraits of the French Royal family, of which numerous copies were made.

Studio of Winterhalter, after circa 1845.

Half-length variant of the above, studio of Winterhalter, after circa 1843.

Half-length variant of the above, studio of Winterhalter, after circa 1845.

Miniature by Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Duchesne (aka Duchesne de Gisors),
after Winterhalter, after circa 1843.

Miniature by Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Duchesne (aka Duchesne de Gisors), after Winterhalter, circa 1845.

An overdoor with a portrait of the duchesse, by Eugène Lami, circa 1846.

At the fall of his father's so-called "July Monarchy" in 1848, the duc d'Aumale and the extended Orléans family had fled to England. The deposed King and his relatives had many connections there, not least due to a previous exile; the house in Twickenham, London which Louis-Philippe rented for a few years during the Napoléonic régime had been renamed Orléans House. They also had close family ties to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. The former now lent them Claremont House and, four years later, the duc and duchesse d'Aumale purchased Orléans House as their residence in exile.

Drawing of the duchesse by her brother-in-law, the prince de Joinville, 1850.

By Victor Mottez, 1853.

The duchesse and her son, Louis, prince de Condé, by Victor Mottez, 1851.

By Charles François Jalabert, 1866.

By Charles François Jalabert, 1866.

Seven months after the death of the duchesse d'Aumale, at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, her husband volunteered for service in the French army; his offer was, unsurprisingly, declined. After the fall of the Second Empire, the duc d'Aumale and his surviving son were allowed to return to France, where the duke was soon elected deputy for the Oise département. The following year he was reinstated in the army; his military career continued until 1879, at which point he was made Inspector General of the Army. Royal princes were banned from positions in the military in 1883, and he retired from public life. And in 1886, due to continuing worries about pro-monarchist elements, the government decided to expel from French territory the heads of former reigning families and declared that all members of those families should be disqualified for any public position or election to any public body. He protested, but was expelled to Belgium. Ironically, in that same year, as a widower with no living heirs, he rewrote his will leaving Chantilly and his quite remarkable collection to the French state; today, is is one of France's most important palace art museums.

By Léon Bonnat, 1880.

Studio of Bonnat, after 1880.

By Léon Bonnat, 1890.

By Henri Cain, 1893.

By Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant (aka Benjamin Constant), 1896, the year before his death.

Three years after the commencement of his second exile, he was allowed to return to France, where he resumed his scholarly and benevolent pursuits. He died eight years later, at the age of seventy-five. Today, his remains rest with those of his parents, his wife, his children, among many others in the Chapelle royale de Dreux, the necropolis of the Orléans royal family.

The tombs of the duc and duchesse in the Orléans' Chapelle royale at Dreux.

The duc d'Aumale's eye, unknown miniaturist, date unknown.

The duchesse d'Aumale's eye, unknown miniaturist, date unknown.