Lot 259: JEAN-FRANÇOIS DE TROY

JEAN-FRANÇOIS DE TROY PARIS 1679 - 1752 ROME PORTRAIT OF PRINCESS LUISA MARIA THERESA STUART (1692-1712) inscribed, verso: Fait a S Germain / Par f de Troy / En 1700 oil on canvas, in a painted oval 70 by 58 cm.; 27 1/2 by 23 in.

Listed in the Inventories of Princess Sophia of Hannover in 1709, no. 606, and in 1714, p. 70;
Listed in the inventories of Georg Kestner in 1867, no. 196

Princess Sophia of Hanover (1630-1714), daughter of Elizabeth of Bohemia;
bought by Georg Kestner (1774-1867), Hannover;
by descent to his daughter Wilhelmine Kestner (1803-1880), who inherited the picture in 1867, and in 1822 married Georg Ludwig Laves;
thence by descent in the Laves family, Hannover;
Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby's, 30th November 2000, lot 104 (bt. for £17,000 by the present owner)

Born in exile at St Germaine-en-Laye, the sitter was the daughter of James II of England and Mary of Modena. Known to Jacobites as The Princess Royal, Louisa died of smallpox in 1712, aged 20.

The present painting is one of a pair, the pendant being a portrait of her elder brother James Edward Stuart, The Old Pretender (Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum, Hannover). Both pictures were originally in the collection of the Electress Princess Sophia of Hannover, and were acquired by the archivist and collector Georg Kestner in the nineteenth century. The majority of Kestner's collection descended to his eldest son Herrmann who founded the Kestner Museum in Hannover, now the city's State Museum.