Attributed To Adolf Ulrik Wertmüller (1751–1811) — Bust Portrait Of A Woman

Adolf Ulrik Wertmüller was the cousin of the great portrait painter Roslin, who served as his patron during his stay in France. The Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture awarded him a medal as early as 1773. After extended stays in Rome and Lyon, where he established a reputation as a portrait painter, he returned to settle in Paris. Admitted to the Academy in 1783, he was elected a full member in 1784. Accepted into the Swedish high society of the capital and supported by Gustav III, he was then appointed “First Painter to His Majesty the King of Sweden, with the right of succession.” He achieved fleeting fame at the 1785 Salon, when he exhibited “The Queen, His Highness the Dauphin, and the King’s Daughter, Strolling in the English Garden of the Petit Trianon.” Facing the jealousy of many artists and art critics, he received few official commissions thereafter. After a long stay in Bordeaux between 1788 and 1790, the French Revolution forced him into exile: he traveled through the United States, where he painted a portrait of George Washington; returning to Paris for a time in 1797, he painted that of Aimée de Coigny, the “Young Captive” of the poet André Chénier. He emigrated permanently to the United States in 1800: there he married and spent the rest of his life.

The two matching paintings we are presenting here are typical of Wertmüller’s work during his stay in Bordeaux. The man, with curly, powdered hair, wears a yellow waist coat with floral motifs under his velvet coat. The woman, whose voluminous hairstyle falls in ringlets over her shoulders, wears a mousseline dress embellished with a blue ribbon and a belt of the same color.

Our portrait of a woman can be compared to the one sold by Artcurial in Paris on September 27, 2022. (https://www.artcurial.com/ventes/4205/lots/168-a).

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Details:
- Some signs of wear.
- Standard restorations.