Much like Jean Marc Nattier in the next generation, Gobert became a fashionable portraitist among the French aristocracy and royal family at court, in part through lending all his sitters a uniform grace that often makes a given identity difficult to differentiate. The inscription indicates that this is Marie Adélaïde, the mother of Louis XV, who sat for Gobert on several occasions. The jeweled armband and low, transparent dress signal a classicizing, allegorical portrait elevating her to the realm of the gods rather than representing contemporary fashion.
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Dimensions:Oval, 28 3/4 x 23 1/4 in. (73 x 59.1 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Gift of the Marquis de La Bégassière, 1963
Accession Number:63.120
Gobert trained with his father, a sculptor, and was working as a court portraitist in 1682, at the age of twenty. In 1701 he was accepted as a candidate member and some months later admitted to full membership in the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. He sent seventeen portraits of members of the royal family and other courtiers and important sitters to the 1704 Salon. Between September 1707 and March 1709 he was in Lunéville, painting Léopold, duc de Lorraine (1679–1721) and his wife, Élizabeth Charlotte d'Orléans (1676–1744). Principally occupied with portraying aristocratic women, he exhibited again at the Salon in 1737 and then disappeared from sight.
Born in 1685, Marie Adélaïde was the daughter of Vittorio Amedeo II (1666–1732) of Savoy and Anne Marie d'Orléans (1669–1728), niece of Louis XIV (1638–1715). Marie Adélaïde's parents were second cousins and she in turn married, in 1697, her second cousin, Louis, duc de Bourgogne (1682–1712), eldest son of Louis, le Grand Dauphin (1661–1711). She was very lively, and popular with the King and at court, where Gobert evidently painted her in her twenty-fourth year. We know little of her because her father-in-law, her husband, and she herself predeceased Louis XIV, who was succeeded by her only surviving son, Louis XV (1710–1774). She died at twenty-six. This portrait is not specifically recorded but Gobert is known to have painted Marie Adélaïde, her husband, and many members of their families. As she is not dressed in court costume, the picture may be a reduced replica of an allegorical portrait.
Katharine Baetjer 2013
Inscription: Dated and inscribed (top): ADELAIDE DE SAVOIE / DUCHESSE DE BOURGOGNE. 1710
[Galerie Marcus, Paris, after 1945–62; sold to La Bégassière]; Jacques and Joyce, marquis and marquise de La Bégassière, Paris and Oyster Bay, N.Y. (1962–63)
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Eighteenth-Century Woman," December 12, 1981–September 5, 1982, unnumbered cat. (p. 51).
Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 367, ill.
Xavier Salmon. Jean-Marc Nattier, 1685–1766. Exh. cat., Musée national des châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon. Paris, 1999, ill. p. 30.
Neil Jeffares. Minutiae at the Met. March 29, 2019, unpaginated, ill. (color) [https://neiljeffares.wordpress.com/2019/03/29/minutiae-at-the-met/], would prefer to identify the sitter as Elisabeth Charlotte d'Orléans (Dresden, inv. 761) or perhaps the marquise de Nesle (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Agen).
Katharine Baetjer. French Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art from the Early Eighteenth Century through the Revolution. New York, 2019, pp. 44, 50–52, no. 6, ill. (color).
Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (French, Paris 1755–1842 Paris)
1789
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