En famille - Marie-Anne Gaillard de la Bouexière de Gagny and her family, by Jean-François de Troy, 1736

 

Marie Anne Françoise Gaillard de la Bouëxière de Gagny, dame de Richebourg, (1706-1751), is the striking central figure and graceful focus of this group portrait. Her father, Jean Gaillard de la Bouëxière, seigneur de Gagny et de la Bouëxière, (1676-1759), is seated behind her, his arm resting on her toilette table. And in the right half of the composition is seated her husband, Hyacinthe Hocquart, seigneur de Montfermeil, (1695-1764) - the couple married in 1725 and would have eight children - with their eldest son, Jean Hyacinthe Emmanuel Hocquart de Montfermeil, the future marquis de Montfermeil, de Coubron, and de Gagny, (1727-1778). Both her father and her husband were fermiers généraux and firmly established in the royal administration, their prominent positions allowing them to acquire property, wealth, and title. The couple's son also pursued a brilliant career in the royal administration, being appointed councilor to the Parliament of Paris in 1747, then councilor in the Seconde Chambre des Requêtes du Palais in 1758.

The informality of this portrait makes it something almost like a genre painting or a French "conversation piece"...

... and I find the affectionate and naturalistic pose of father and son particularly charming.

I love the "still-life" of the silver toilette articles; I especially enjoy the detail of the pins just visible sticking out of the pin cushion.

I love this very tender detail.

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Auctioned in November of 2025, the painting sold for €4,067,600, more than double its high estimate.

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Along the stretcher of the husband's chair is where the artist chose to sign and date the painting.

An imperial jewel... and a small mystery - ruby, diamond, and pearl brooch, circa 1850s

 

After France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War and the fall of the Second Empire in 1871, the Empress Eugénie fled to England, where she subsequently sold many of her jewels. This particular brooch was bought by Harry Emanuel, a London jeweler; his firm provided the purple velvet case in which the piece is still kept. Later, Mrs. Ernest Raphael, née Flora Cecilia Sassoon, acquired the piece and wore it when her portrait was painted by John Singer Sargent in 1905.

Of French make, the brooch is set throughout with round-cut rubies and old mine-cut and pear-shaped diamonds, terminating in three pear-shaped natural pearl drops. The setting is silver and gold.

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Flora Cecilia Sassoon, the daughter of Kate Ezekiel and Reuben Sassoon; she married Ernest Raphael, a London financier, in May of 1893.

Even as described by Sargent's gloriously impressionistic brushwork, the Empress' brooch is easily identifiable.

Both the brooch and the painting remained in the Raphael family until 1983, at which point they were offered for sale at Christie's. The brooch was purchased by a private collector in South Carolina; in 2017, the piece was once again sold at auction.

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The "mystery" is this. This ruby, diamond, and pearl brooch. Frequently found in online searches and always identified as the brooch formerly belonging to the Empress, the very same brooch that is featured in this post, but... it is not. It's all very, very similar but, when one observes it closely, it's clear that it isn't the same piece. So what is this, this very close copy? How did it come to be, when and for whom?

Marineros y otros - photographs by Gregorio Prieto and Eduardo Chicharro Briones, circa 1929-31

 

Marineros.

The two young Spaniards, Prieto and Chicharro Briones, met as colleagues at the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome, became friends, and collaborated on a series of experimental photographs. Prieto devised the scenes and was the primary model for the images, while Chicharro Briones worked the camera and handled the technical side of the endeavor. Prieto had a particular fascination with sailors at the time, apparently identifying so strongly with the archetype that he wandered the streets and towns of Italy dressed as one.

Deukalion.

El péndulo.

Recuerdo de Roma.

Marinero durmiendo.

Herida por la belleza clásica.

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Gregorio Prieto Muñoz (2 May 1897, Valdepeñas - 14 November 1992, Valdepeñas), Spanish painter associated with the Generation of '27, an influential group of avant-garde Spanish poets and artists that gradually formed between 1923 and 1927. The eighth son of a cabinet-maker, he started drawing and then painting at the age of four. When he was seven, the family moved to Madrid. At eighteen he entered the Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando and, after being awarded several scholarships, he moved to Paris in 1925 where he had his first contact with Cubism and the Surrealists. Three years later, he received a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome - Real Academia de España en Roma - where he remained until 1932.

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Eduardo Chicharro Briones (13 June 1905, Madrid - 15 March 1964, Madrid), Spanish painter and poet, founder and one of the main theorists of Postism, an avant-garde movement that emerged in Spain in the mid-1940s. The son of Eduardo Chicharro y Agüera, who had been court painter to King Alfonso XIII, when he was seven his family moved to Rome; he remained there until the age of twenty. In 1925, after completing his military service in Spain, he returned to Rome on a scholarship granted by the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome. He remained there until 1935.

Rome, 1929. Depending on the source, this portrait is captioned as being Prieto and Chicharro Briones, or merely the former and an amigo.