Jean-jaques And Louise Aunant - Portraits From The Louis XV Period, Ca 1765 - Follower Of F.-h. Drouais

Jean-Jaques Aunant and his wife Louise, née Blachière
Pair of portraits from the Louis XV period, circa 1765
French school
Follower of François-Hubert Drouais (1727-1775)
Oil on canvas [relined]
Original frames
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81 x 65 cm [stretcher]
92 x 77 cm [frame]
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Very good condition.
Both portraits were previously relined.
Some old retouching, notably a visible pentimento along the length of the fingers of Madame's right hand.
The frames, original, are in good condition. Note the upper crosspiece of Monsieur's frame which has been consolidated after an old fracture, due to wood-boring insects [now inactive].
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Jean-Jaques Aunant (1718-1787) and his wife Louise née Blachière (1733-… ) are descendants of Huguenot refugees, probably from Gard for the former and from Ardèche for the latter, settled in Frankfurt am Main in Germany. Louise's father, Marc André, was born in Frankfurt in 1703, which argues for his family's exile as soon as the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, or shortly after. Louise was baptized in Frankfurt on May 31, 1733.
We find as early as 1722 in Hanau, very close to Frankfurt, a certain Jean Aunant, a silk stocking manufacturer, who is perhaps the father of our Jean-Jaques. Born in 1718 and died in 1787 (according to the information on the back of the canvas), he married Louise in Frankfurt on December 1, 1754.
We then find their trace in Lyon, from 1760: their son Marc André was born there on May 12, before being baptized the following month in Rolle (Switzerland), in Protestant land. Jean-Jaques Aunant was a merchant (MM. Jean-Jaques Aunant & Compagnie), residing at the "Change de Londres", a Lyon financial center near rue Sainte-Catherine where offices, shops and apartments were available for rent. He is mentioned in the Affiches de Lyon, from 1763 to 1769, that he is selling a horse and a green-painted cabriolet (23.11.1763) or steel and iron tools for watchmaking (04.09.1765) or that he is looking to rent a somewhat clean cabriolet to make the round trip to Geneva (29.07.1767). In 1769, he informs that a very comfortable sedan is being sent back to Frankfurt on the Main (30.03.1769) [Affiches de Lyon].
Jean-Jaques Aunant is mentioned as a debtor of the Lyon textile merchants Audras, Gaudin & Cie in August 1765 for the sum of 2,435 livres, 12 sols and 9 deniers (approximately 25,000 euros) [Dato 2017, p. 64]
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These two portraits can be dated to the mid-1760s. Monsieur is approaching fifty, and Madame has just turned thirty. The painter paid particular attention to the clothing: Jean-Jaques wears, under a rather sober dark green moiré velvet coat, a spectacular waistcoat embroidered with gold thread, lined with ermine. As for Louise, she is dressed in a steel-grey silk dress enhanced with very graceful floral embroidery; she poses in a wooded setting with a basket of apples and a gardener's knife, in keeping with the country fashion inspired by Madame de Pompadour.
These portraits are similar to the work of François-Hubert Drouais, and particularly to his portrait of Buffon painted in 1763 [see last photo].
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References
- Dato, Moïra (2017), Silks for the Crown: five partnerships of merchant manufacturers in eighteenth-century Lyon, Thesis, University of Glasgow [available online]
- Les Affiches de Lyon [available online]