Louis HERSENT (Paris 1777 - 1860) Portrait... Lot 150

Louis HERSENT (Paris 1777 - 1860) Portrait of Countess Walsh de Serrant and her children Oil on its original canvas, monogrammed and dated lower right "LH / 1832" (Vallée Bourniche successeurs de Belot rue de l'Arbre sec in Paris) (accidents and missing, small scratches) 228 x 179 cm Bibliography : Catalog of the exhibition Louis Hersent (1777-1860), peintre d'histoire et portraitiste, Paris, Musée de la Vie Romantique, September 29, 1993-January 9, 1994, p. 78, no. 91, repro. p. 79. Louis Hersent was brought back into the spotlight by the exhibition devoted to him by the Musée de la Vie romantique in Paris in 1993. This pupil of Jean-Baptiste Regnault obtained the second prize of Rome in 1797 and exhibited at all the Salons from 1804 to 1831. He was successful under the Restoration as a history painter, painting for example, in 1817, "Louis XVI helping the unfortunate during the winter of 1788", a painting now kept in the museum of the Château de Versailles. Under the July Monarchy, he devoted himself to portraiture. In 1832, the year of the present painting, in response to a commission from Louis-Philippe, he painted "The Portrait of Louis-Philippe and his sons the Duke of Chartres and the Duke of Nemours" (canvas, 262 x 197 cm, Musée du Château de Versailles) for the Château d'Eu, and the following year he painted "The Portrait of Queen Marie Amélie and her children" (canvas, 230 x 164 cm, Musée du Château de Versailles). In this painting of similar dimensions, he places Madame de Serrant and her two eldest children, Gaston (1824-1843) and Marguerite (1826-1839), in the grounds of the Château de Serrant. In the background you can see this building, originally built to defend a passage on the Loire River about fifteen kilometers west of Angers. In 1749, the Serrant estate was acquired by François-Jacques Walsh (1704-1782), a wealthy shipowner from Nantes of Irish origin, who created the English garden and Louis XV made the seigneury a county a few years later. Sophie Legrand (1801-1872), daughter of Jean François Legrand, director general of indirect taxes for the department of the Seine, married in 1823 Théobald Walsh, fourth count of Serrant (1796-1836) of whom she had four children. In second marriage she married a cousin of her husband Alfred de Walsh-Serrant. A woman of taste, she had portraits and sculptures made by renowned artists, including Louis Hersent, and restored the château du Plessis-Macé, which had by then returned to the family estate. Provenance : château de la Maroutière Expert Cabinet Eric Turquin ATTENTION : An authorization or a bank deposit of 10% will be necessary in order to bid live on this lot. Without this authorization we reserve the right to refuse live bids. ATTENTION