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Lot 34: Jean-Laurent Mosnier (Paris 1743 or 1744-1808 Saint Petersburg)

Est: £40,000 GBP - £60,000 GBP
Christie'sLondon, United KingdomDecember 08, 2009

Item Overview

Description

Jean-Laurent Mosnier (Paris 1743 or 1744-1808 Saint Petersburg)
Portrait of George Hay, 7th Marquess of Tweeddale (1753-1804), full-length, in a blue coat, a gold waistcoat and a white stock, holding a top hat and a cane, his peer's robes on the chair beside him, with a hound, a ship at sea beyond
signed and dated 'J.L: Mosnier. f 1794.' (lower right)
oil on canvas
96 1/8 x 60 3/8 in. (244.2 x 153.4 cm.)
in a contemporary Edinburgh frame

Artist or Maker

Exhibited

London, Royal Academy, 1795, no. 233.

Literature

E. Waterhouse, The Dictionary of British 18th Century Painters, Woodbridge, 1981, p. 250, illustrated.
S. Lee, 'Mosnier, Jean-Laurent', in The Dictionary of Art, London and New York, 1996, XXII, p. 191.

Provenance

The sitter, Yester House, Gifford, East Lothian, and by descent.

Notes

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 15% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.
The French painter Jean-Laurent Mosnier, who studied at the Académie St. Luc in Paris, was appointed Peintre de la Reine to Marie-Antoinette in 1776 and a full member of the Academie Royale in 1788, fled Paris for London in 1790 after the outbreak of the French Revolution. He remained in London where he exhibited at the Royal Academy for the following six years, later moving to Hamburg for four years before settling, in 1801, in St. Petersburg, where he became Court Painter to the Tsarina. Mosnier was in his late forties when he moved to London, and his portrait style was already formed but he progressively sought to respond to the challenge posed by the native portrait-painters with whose works his were publicly juxtaposed at successive Royal Academy exhibitons between 1791 and 1796. The portraits he executed in England show a Parisian sophistication and a number of prominent public figures sat to him, including William Petty, 1st Marquis of Lansdowne, Warren Hastings, Admiral Lord Rodney and the Duchess of Leeds.

George Hay, 7th Marquess of Tweeddale (1753-1804), the great grandson of John, 2nd Marquess of Tweeddale, Lord Chancellor of Scotland, whose wife, Lady Mary Maitland (d. 1702) was the only child and heiress of John Duke of Lauderdale, inherited on the death of his first cousin once-removed, George, 6th Marquess of Tweeddale, in 1777. This ambitious portrait which Mosnier exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1795, may well have been commissioned to commemorate Tweeddale's appointment as Lord Lieutenant of Haddingtonshire in 1794. The Marquess married Lady Hannah Charlotte Maitland, daughter of the 7th Earl of Lauderdale in 1785, with whom he was to have five sons and four daughters. The Marquess and Marchioness went travelling on the Continent in 1802, on account of his health, beginning in France, but the following year when war broke out between the two countries, they were interned by the French, with other British subjects, and imprisoned in the fortress at Verdun, where the Marchioness died on 8 May 1804 and her husband in August the same year.

Auction Details

Old Master & 19th Century Paintings, Drawings & Watercolours Evening Sale

by
Christie's
December 08, 2009, 07:00 PM GMT

8 King Street, St. James's, London, LDN, SW1Y 6QT, UK