Joseph NAVLET (1821-1889) Lot n° 31

Louis XVIII and the Duchess of Angouleme in the snowstorm. Watercolor and gouache on paper, signed lower left "J. Navlet". In a rectangular giltwood frame. H. 29 x W. 47,5 cm (at sight). History The one who was at the time only the Count of Provence fled from Paris on June 20, 1791, the same day as his brother King Louis XVI, but he was lucky enough not to be recognized or caught. Joining first the army of the emigrants in Coblence, he will thereafter lead a life of exile, and this life will depend only on the subsidies and the hospitality of foreign sovereigns. This is how he arrived in Mitau on March 29, 1798, at the invitation of Tsar Paul I. He was to find a bit of splendor in the former palace of the Dukes of Courland (the duchy had been annexed by Russia in 1795), with a suite of 108 people and a hundred bodyguards equipped at the expense of the Tsar, who also granted him an annual income of 200,000 rubles. But above all, the one who is officially the king Louis XVIII since the death of the Dauphin in the Temple prison in 1795, is going to elaborate a political program intended to be applied to his return in France. Moreover, it was in Mitau that the marriage of Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte, orphaned daughter of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, to the Duke of Angoulême, eldest son of the Count of Artois, took place on June 10, 1799. But, on January 20, 1801, following the intemperate language of Louis XVIII's entourage, he was expelled to Warsaw, then in Prussia. It was during this trip that Louis, accompanied by his niece the Duchess of Angouleme and her retinue, were blocked by a snowstorm on January 24, 1801, and that the King was forced to spend two hours on foot in the snow. It is this scene that the history painter Navlet, present in many French museums including the Musée d'Orsay, wanted to imagine here.