La reine si petite - portrait miniatures of Marie Antoinette

François Dumont.

Putting together a collection of portraits of Marie Antoinette is always a tricky business. Besides the easy pitfall of known images copied by different hands at a later date, combined with the general lack of concern for getting an accurate likeness at the time, you also have to be able to sift through all the portraits that are labeled as Marie Antoinette that probably/certainly aren't; a painting of the martyred Queen is always going to have more allure, have a higher auction value, than one that is merely of some pretty inconnue.

Most of the portraits here are by the hand of the Queen's favorite miniature painter, François Dumont (7 January 1751, Lunéville – 27 August 1831, Paris). His work for her, starting in the 1770s and continuing until only a year before her execution, is usually easy enough to identify. In addition to his particular technique, the position of the head is almost always the same in portrait after portrait; it's therefore likely that the Queen didn't sit for every one, rather that he reused the preferred likeness, only changing the surrounding elements - hairstyle, clothing, background. I haven't always been able to identify which of his pieces here are autograph; I assume that some of these are contemporary copies. And I don't know the dates for most of these, though the decade in which they were produced is not too difficult to surmise given the hairstyles: up for the 1770s, across for the 1780s.

François Dumont.

Jean-Laurent Mosnier, 1775.

François Dumont.

Jean-Baptiste Isabey. Isabey was student of Dumont at the time, and his extreme youth would account for the crude technique and poor likeness.

François Dumont. Possibly a copy.

François Dumont.

Pierre-François Drais, Paris, 1777. I'm not entirely convinced that this is Marie Antoinette.

Pierre-Adolphe Hall.

Pierre-Adolphe Hall. Possibly a copy with variations.

Vincenza Benzi-Bastéris, 1784.

François Dumont.

Ignazio-Pio-Vittoriano (Ignace-Jean-Victor) Campana, circa 1783. Sent to the Queen's paramour, Count Axel Ferson.

Ignazio-Pio-Vittoriano (Ignace-Jean-Victor) Campana, circa 1783. Sent to the Queen's sister, Maria Carolina, Queen of Naples.

 Louis-Marie Sicard, called Sicardi, 1787.

Louis-Marie Sicard, called Sicardi.

Unknown, possibly Dumont.

François Dumont.

François Dumont.

François Dumont. Possibly a copy.

François Dumont. Probably a copy.

Marie Antoinette et ses enfants (Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte et le Dauphin Louis-Charles) au pied d'un arbre, by François Dumont, 1790.

Portrait of the King, Queen, and the duc de Normandie in the style of Louis-Bertin Parant, circa 1790.

François Dumont. Several of her portraits from this last period are "antique" in style.

François Dumont.

François Dumont.

Unknown. This appears to be a mourning ring so, possibly, it was made after the Queen's death.

François Dumont, 1792.

François Dumont, 1792.

The chevalier François de Ginestous, circa 1793, the year of her death.

François Dumont.

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Sometimes the internet lets me down! I've seen this particularly lovely early portrait of the Queen by Dumont reproduced numerous times. And yet when I looked - and looked... and looked - to find an image of it to include here, I could not find one. Only this black and white image; a cropped version with the color gone awry; and some sort of copy of the original, perhaps a colored engraving. Very disappointing....

And while I was at it, another early Dumont portrait turned up - but this was all I could get of it. Argh.