Le goût d'une jeune fille pour la musique - a portrait by Adèle Romany, 1802

 

Portrait d’une jeune personne près d’un piano, tenant un cahier de musique, ou Mlle Thevenet de Montgarrel, future Mme Gillet Ducoudray
Portrait of a Young Person at a Piano Holding a Music Score, or Mlle Thevenet de Montgarrel, the future Mme Gillet Ducoudray

The model’s identity is easily confirmed by the painting's provenance; until being sold in 2020, the portrait had remained in the same family for two-hundred and eighteen years, from its creation in 1802. The young music lover is Alexandrine-Florence-Virginie-Casimire Thevenet de Montgarrel (? - 1827). Her parents were Joseph Thevenet, senior employee at the royal and imperial lottery of France, and Thérèse Félicité Ledoux. On 22 June 1805, at Notre-Dame de Lorette in Paris, she married Amédée-Madeleine-Charles Gillet Ducoudray (1778-1829), the private secretary and future cabinet advisor of Louis Bonaparte king of Holland. The couple would have five children: Louis Eugène Napoléon, Alexandre Eugène, Euphrosine Virginie (ancestress of the painting's former owners), Alexandrine Laeticia, and Alexandre Joseph Amédée.

The charming young lady in the portrait, dressed and jeweled in the height of French Consulate fashion, was undoubtedly an amateur musician, surrounded as she is by music scores, seated in front of her fortepiano made by Sébastien Érard. On the music rack sits Antonio Sacchini's three-act lyric tragedy Œdipe à la colonne. On the left is the score of L’Ariodant, a drama in three parts and in prose by François-Benoît Hoffman, with music by Étienne Nicolas Méhul. 

And in Mlle Thevenet's lap, the score to L'Amour filial, an opera in one act, text by Charles-Albert Demoustier, music by Pierre Gavaux. In a possible tribute to her father, who likely commissioned the painting, she appears to point to the lines that read: 

« Moi, chaque matin, je reçois

Le premier baiser de mon père »

After being retained by the sitter's family from the date of its creation, the portrait was sold by the Drouot auction house in 2020 for € 41,800.

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Adèle Romany (7 December 1769 - 6 June 1846, Paris), French painter known for miniatures and portraits, especially those of people involved in the performing arts. Born Marie-Jeanne Mercier, the illegitimate child of the marquis Godefroy de Romance, former captain of the guards, she was legitimized at the age of nine. Little is known of her artistic training, but she later stated that she trained in the studio for female artists directed by the wife of Jean-Baptiste Regnault. In 1790 she married the miniature painter François Antoine Romany, but they divorced only three years later. In that same year she exhibited for the first time at the Paris Salon, the French Revolution having given women artists better access and more opportunities within the art establishment. This was also the year she changed her first name to Adèle and, in future, her paintings were signed with several variations consisting of her maiden and married names: la Citoyenne Adèle dit Romany; Adèle Romany née Romance; Mme Adèle de Romance; Adèle Romance dit Romany; Mme Adèle Romany Deromance; Mme Romany-de-Romance. Typically, though, she exhibited work at the Paris Salon from 1793 to 1808 under the name Romany, but from 1808 to 1833 under the name Romanée. In 1808, she was awarded a gold medal of the jury. She died in Paris, aged seventy-six.