This latest event features a single-owner 25-lot collection of paintings by French artists who lived and worked in Italy, followed by a large mixed-owner selection.
A highlight of the various owners’ sale is this 5ft 2in x 3ft 9in (1.6 x 1.1m) oil on canvas portrait of Henry Seymour (1776-1849) by the French artist François Pascal Simon, baron Gérard (1770-1837).
The sitter’s parents were Henry Seymour Snr (1729-1807) and his second wife Anne-Louise-Thérèse Comtesse de Panthou, a French aristocrat. In 1778 the couple moved to France so the young Henry had a combined English and French education before being forced to flee France in August 1792 when the family’s assets were seized under the Revolution. When Henry Seymour senior died in 1807 he bequeathed the demesnes of East Knoyle House, Wiltshire, and Northbrook to his son.
The family archives of the artist record that Gérard painted Seymour in 1815, for which he was paid 6000 francs. The portrait depicts Henry not in contemporary clothing but in the costume of the early 17th century (Henry was a distant relative of the Tudors) wearing a slashed doublet and breeches. His hand is placed on the head of a greyhound that was in fact the artist’s own pet dog.
The painting was left by Henry to his son Alfred, then passed to his only daughter Jane Margaret Seymour, both of whom lived at East Knoyle. It appeared at Christie’s in 1945 after Jane Seymour’s death and then has a provenance to an English collection. It comes up for sale at Artcurial with an estimate of €150,000-200,000.
