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Title:Charles X (1757–1836), King of France, after Gérard
Artist:Henry Bone (British, Truro 1755–1834 Somerstown)
Date:1829
Medium:Enamel
Dimensions:14 1/4 x 10 1/4 in. (364 x 260 mm)
Classification:Miniatures
Credit Line:Bequest of Mary Clark Thompson, 1923
Object Number:24.80.523
The Artist: Bone was born in Truro, Cornwall, the son of a cabinetmaker. He was apprenticed as a china painter, but after the failure of the Bristol factory where he was working, he settled in London about 1779. The greater part of his output consisted of copies in enamel of old master and contemporary paintings, but he painted a few portraits ad vivum. He exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1781 until 1834 and was named a royal academician in 1811. He served as enamel painter to George III, George IV, and William IV, and he often incorporated references to these and similar appointments in the lengthy inscriptions he wrote in the enamel on the back of his miniatures. He died in London.
The Miniature: Charles X, grandson of Louis XVI, succeeded his brother Louis XVIII as king of France in 1824. He took refuge in England in 1830, abdicating in favor of Louis-Philippe. The portrait by François Pascal Gérard (1770–1837) is in the collection of the marquis of Salisbury, Hatfield House. The National Portrait Gallery, London, has Bone's squared pencil drawing, inscribed Gerard pinxt Charles 10th—King of France (Walker 1999, no. 110).
[2016; adapted from Reynolds and Baetjer 1996]
Inscription: Signed (in the enamel, at the foot of the throne): HBone [HB in monogram]; inscribed (reverse, in enamel): Charles Xth King of France / The Original Picture by Gerard and / graciously given by His Most / Christian Majesty to E.M. Marchioness / Dowager of Salisbury by whom it was / with heartfelt gratitude received in / December 1826. / London / October 1829. / Painted by Henry Bone R.A. Enamel painter to / His Majesty and to the late King and the late / Duke of York &c &c— After the Original by - Gerard.
?Jules Auguste Armand Marie, prince de Polignac (in 1830); ?his wife, Maria Charlotte, princesse de Polignac (until 1831; returned to Bone); ?Henry Bone (1831–d. 1834; his estate sale, Christie's, London, June 7, 1836, no. 38, for 25 1/2 gns. to Bone); ?his son, Henry Pierce Bone (from 1836); Mary Clark Thompson, New York and Canandaigua, N.Y. (until d. 1923)
London. Royal Academy. May 7–July 21, 1832, no. 491 (as "His Majesty Charles X., King of France. Painted by His Majesty's command, and presented by him to the Dowager Marchioness of Salisbury. The original by Gerard, the enamel painted in 1829," by H. Bone).
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "European Miniatures in The Metropolitan Museum of Art," November 5, 1996–January 5, 1997, no. 225.
J. Jope Rogers. Notice of Henry Bone, R.A., and His Works, Together with Those of His Son, Henry Pierce Bone, and Other Members of the Family. Truro, n.d., p. 14.
Janet S. Byrne. "The Best Laid Plans." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 17 (March 1959), pp. 194–95, ill.
Daphne Foskett. A Dictionary of British Miniature Painters. New York, 1972, vol. 1, p. 172.
Graham Reynolds with the assistance of Katharine Baetjer. European Miniatures in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1996, pp. 10, 14, 173–74, no. 225, colorpl. 225 and ill. p. 175, state that another version by Bone was included in the Bone estate sale of 1836.
Richard Walker. "Henry Bone's Pencil Drawings in the National Portrait Gallery." Walpole Society 61 (1999), p. 319, under no. 110, identify the MMA work as the one included in the Bone sale of 1836.
Pierre de Nolhac. Louise Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun: Peintre de Marie-Antoinette. Gennevilliers, 2015, ill. p. 207 (color).
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