Since both the queen and the countess of Artois (wife of the future Charles X) had died before the Restoration, Marie-Therese, duchess of Angoulême, was the highest ranking woman at the French court. She had had a tragic childhood as the only surviving daughter of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, having endured a miserable imprisonment, the abuse of her guards and her parents execution on the guillotine. Her unfortunate eight year old brother, titular Louis XVII, was taken from the care of his mother, sister and aunt in July 1789 and confined to solitary imprisonment while being regularly beaten, until his death in prison in June 1795 aged ten. Marie-Therese, styled Madame Royale, was confined to the prison quarters with her mother (executed on 16 October 1793) and aunt, Madame Elisabeth (also guillotined, on 10 May 1794); when they were taken away to their deaths the fifteen year old princess remained alone in prison, unaware of the fate of her mother and aunt, whom she believed were merely imprisoned elsewhere. She was allowed just two books which she read repeatedly, all the while having had to listen to the cries of her brother as he was beaten by his jailor. Finally, on 10 August 1795, she was told of her mother and aunt’s deaths, and broke down in tears of anguish – the shock remained with her for the rest of her life.

On 18 December 1795, on the eve of her seventeenth birthday, she was finally released in exchange for six leading republican generals and politicians who had been captured by the Austrians and was escorted to Vienna, to the court of her cousin, Emperor Francis II. After a few months she moved to join her uncle, now titular king as Louis XVIII, in Courland (now Western Latvia) and on 10 June 1799, aged twenty, she married her cousin, Louis-Antoine, duke of Angoulême. As eldest son of the Count of Artois he was destined to be the eventual heir to the throne, but they had no children, and ultimately the senior line of the family expired in 1883 with the death of her nephew, Henri (for legitimists Henri V). With the death of Louis XVIII on 16 September 1824 her father-in-law succeeded as King and she became dauphine, the traditional title of the wife of the heir to the French throne. Charles X was deposed in the July 1830 revolution and she and her husband were forced into exile – she became titular Queen in the eyes of many legitimists with the death of her father-in-law in 1836, dying in exile in Austria in 1851.

Our painting, entitled La dot (the dowry), dates from 1821, is one of at least two paintings by Haudebourt-Lescot owned by the duchess and probably records an actual incident. In a rustic interior the duchess is seated in front of the young bride and her father, a veteran of the recent wars, who stands beside her. In a delicate gesture the duchess solemnly offers the young woman a small purse containing the promised dowry as the girl’s proud father, in his best uniform, with the two chevrons of a corporal on his right sleeve, looks on. The girl is wearing a bouquet of lilies of the valley at her breast and a sprig of the same attached to her lace bonnet. On the shelf behind her there is a traditional wedding brioche with a pink rose, ready to be consumed in the imminent celebrations. Through the door in the back of their modest home we can see the waiting members of the marriage party, chatting to a local violinist employed for the occasion. The incident was intended to affirm the duchess’s reputation as a generous princess, known for her acts of charity towards the less fortunate. Such paintings, presenting their subjects without allegory or particular allusion to their rank, were a way to popularise the royal family and had begun under the Empire. The duchess gave the painting to Baron Etienne-Denis Pasquier, then minister of foreign affairs, a leading figure in the government of the day.

Antoinette Haudebourt-Lescot was the most successful woman painter of her generation; indeed, in Heim’s 1827 portrayal of the galaxy of the greatest contemporary artists, she is the only woman represented. Her style changed over the years between her first exhibition in Rome in 1809 and her paintings of intimate genre scenes with a high degree of finish, those done in Italy recalling the work of Xavier Le Prince (the best-known genre painter of the day) and Leopold Robert. She painted numerous portraits and had a particular sympathy for the marginalised, who frequently feature in her work. She had considerable success painting romantic subjects from contemporary history and literature and was not only patronised by the Duchess of Angoulême but also by the latter’s Neapolitan born sister-in-law, the Duchess of Berry.