Jean Urbain Guerin,
French 1760-1836-
A portrait miniature of Yolande Martine...

Jean Urbain Guerin,

French 1760-1836-

A portrait miniature of Yolande Martine Gabrielle de Polastron, in a white dress, with a harp;

oval, held within a glazed rectangular wooden frame with oval aperture, signed (lower left), bears old label attached to the reverse, 8 x 6.5 cm.

Provenance: Private Collection, Spain.

Note: Yolande Martine Gabrielle de Polastron, Duchess of Polignac (1749-1793) was the favourite of Marie Antoinette, whom she first met when she was presented at the Palace of Versailles in 1775, the year after Marie Antoinette became the Queen of France. She was considered one of the great beauties of pre-Revolutionary society, but her extravagance and exclusivity earned her many enemies.

Guérin painted Marie-Antoinette herself and her husband King Louis XVI, along with many of their political and social circle. After the French Revolution he also painted portraits of several generals of the First French Republic, as well as images of Kléber, Napoleon Bonaparte and Mozart.

Like the present work, most surviving portraits of Gabrielle, as she was generally known, show her to have been attractive. One historian remarked that in her portraits by Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, she generally looks like some harvested and luscious fruit. See, for example, Vigée Le Bruns portrait of her held at Waddeston Manor, UK [no.2154]. She had dark brunette hair, very pale white skin, and, perhaps most unusually, lilac or violet-coloured eyes. Compiling the contemporary accounts of her, one modern historian summarised her physical appearance thus: Her particular freshness of appearance [gave] an impression of utter naturalness ... with her cloud of dark hair, her big eyes, her neat nose and pretty pearly teeth, [she] was generally likened to a Madonna by Raphael (Fraser, Lady Antonia. Marie Antoinette: The Journey, 2001 p. 155).