Portrait of a Woman, Said to be Madame Charles Simon Favart (Marie Justine Benoîte Duronceray, 1727–1772)

Portrait of a Woman, Said to be Madame Charles Simon Favart (Marie Justine Benoîte Duronceray, 1727–1772)

Portrait of a Woman, Said to be Madame Charles Simon Favart (Marie Justine Benoîte Duronceray, 1727–1772)

Artist:François Hubert Drouais (French, Paris 1727–1775 Paris)
Date:1757
Medium:Oil on canvas
Dimensions:31 1/2 x 25 1/2 in. (80 x 64.8 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Mr. and Mrs. Isaac D. Fletcher Collection, Bequest of Isaac D. Fletcher, 1917

In 1745 Mademoiselle Duronceray, a singer, dancer, and comedienne, married Charles Simon Favart (1710–1792) , the father of French comic opera. Among her best known roles was that of the heroine in The Loves of Bastien and Bastienne, 1753, in which she inspired a revolution in theatrical costume by wearing authentic peasant dress. Drouais's elegant secular portrait recalls traditional representations of Saint Cecilia, patron saint of music.

Catalogue Entry
François Hubert Drouais began his career in the studio of his father, the academician Hubert Drouais (1699–1767). He was accepted as an associate of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1755 and admitted to full membership in 1757. Meanwhile he was called to Versailles to paint Louis XV's grandsons, the duc de Berry and the comte de Provence, whose double portrait (Museu de Arte de São Paulo) was among the painter's first Salon exhibits and an initial step toward a career at court, where all of the members of the royal family eventually sat for him. In the eyes of his contemporaries, Drouais excelled at painting women and young children.
This picture, signed and dated 1757, has been said to represent Marie Justine Benoîte Cabaret Duronceray (1727–1772), who first appeared on the Paris stage at the foire Saint-Germain in 1744 or 1745, and thereafter married Charles Simon Favart (1710–1792), writer, librettist, and director of the Opéra Comique and the Comédie Italienne. From 1751 until 1769 Madame Favart reigned supreme in Paris as a comic actress. She was also a singer and dancer and played the harp and harpsichord. Among her most famous roles (some of plays she wrote with her husband) was that of the peasant heroine in Bastien et Bastienne (1753), in which she effected a revolution in theatrical costume by wearing authentic peasant dress.
If Jean Étienne Liotard's pastel of 1757 in the Museum Oskar Reinhart am Stadtgarten, Winterthur, represents Madame Favart and descended in her family until 1907, then the name of Drouais's sitter here is thrown into question. While the Jean Baptiste Defernex bust of Madame Favart (Musée du Louvre, Paris) resembles the Liotard, Maurice Quentin de La Tour's préparation (Musée Antoine Lécuyer, Saint-Quentin) yields a different impression. In any event, this woman with tightly curled and powdered hair in a blue dress and lace cuffs is from the artist's best period. As Charles Sterling observed (1955), she is "psychologically perhaps the finest of his portraits . . . full of simplicity, liveliness, and intimacy."
Katharine Baetjer 2011

Provenance
Madame de Boulemaine, Paris (until 1912, as "Madame Favart Playing the Piano"; sold to Wildenstein); [Wildenstein, Paris and New York, 1912–at least 1916]; Mr. and Mrs. Isaac D. Fletcher, New York (until his d. 1917)

Copyright Image
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