Lot 42: Louis Gauffier (Poitiers or La Rochelle 1761-1801 Livorno)

Louis Gauffier (Poitiers or La Rochelle 1761-1801 Livorno) Portrait of Lourenço José Xavier de Lima, 1st Count of Mafra (1767?-1839), small full-length, in a red waistcoat and navy coat, wearing the decorations of the Order of Aviz, leaning against a pedestal with a sculpture of the Crouching Venus, in the campagna outside Florence signed and dated 'L Gauffier. / flo.ce 1793.' (lower left) oil on canvas, unlined 26½ x 19 5/8 in. (67.3 x 49.9 cm.)

67.3 x 49.9 cm.

Acquired from Galerie J. Kugel, Paris, circa 1970.

Painted in 1793, this striking portrait of Don Lourenço José Xavier de Lima, 1st Count of Mafra is a beautifully preserved example of Gauffier's small full-length portraiture, the genre that dominated the artist's oeuvre until his death in 1801 and for which he would ultimately be most celebrated. A pupil of Hugues Taraval and a student at the Académie Royale, Louis Gauffier was awarded the Prix de Rome in 1784 with his depiction of Christ and the Woman of Canaan (Paris, Ecole National Supérieure des Beaux-Arts). He immediately moved to Rome where he remained until 1789 before returning briefly to France. The deteriorating political situation in revolutionary Paris precipitated his hasty return to Italy, although he continued to send his neoclassical works to the Salon. In March 1790 he married Pauline Chatillon (d. 1801), a portrait painter whom he and François-Hubert Drouais had taught. In 1793 anti-French demonstrations in Rome forced Gauffier to flee to Florence where, in order to make a living, he abandoned the historical, mythological and religious subjects of his formative years and began practicing as a portrait painter. His sitters were chiefly British and French army officers or diplomats and their wives. The Count of Mafra, shown nonchalantly leaning against a sculpture of the Crouching Venus in the landscape outside Florence, was a young minister plenipotentiary sent by the Portuguese crown to Turin. In 1801 he was appointed Portuguese ambassador to London and, three years later, ambassador to Paris. This picture can be compared with another portrait painted by Gauffier soon after his arrival in Florence: Prince Augustus Frederick, later Duke of Sussex (Karlsruhe, Staatliche Kunsthalle), a work sold in these rooms, 11 July 1986, lot 83, for £190,000.