The Tansey Miniatures Foundation

Die Miniatur Über den Künstler

The Tansey Miniatures Foundation

DE
The Miniature About the Artist

Gentleman in a Red Uniform

Louis Marie Autissier

Autissier painted this portrait of an officer with dark curls and wearing a vibrant red uniform in Flanders in 1814. The sitter cannot be identified; the uniform suggests that he was an officer of the 1st Foot Guards in the British Army.1 The name Autissier seems to have been passed around among members of the British military. Several officers had their portraits painted by Autissier, doubtless with the intention of sending them home to their nearest and dearest.2
Louis Marie Autissier hailed from Vannes (Brittany) but moved to Brussels in 1796; today, he ranks among the most significant Belgian miniaturists. He created this portrait of an officer at a time when his reputation as a miniature painter was already well established and hen he was able to choose his customers to some degree. In 1806, he was appointed painter to King Louis Bonaparte of Holland, but in 1814, he hurried to paint the portrait of the newly crowned King Louis XVIII of France. He publicly exhibited the miniature in the same year at the Ghent Salon, thus indicating his political loyalty to the new ruler. Also in 1814, he painted a portrait of William Frederick of Orange- Nassau, who had acceded to the throne as Prince of the Netherlands and was a great admirer of Autissier’s miniatures.
B. P.

1 The possibilities include, for example, Edward Buckley Wynyard (1788 –1864). We wish to thank Dimitri Gorchkoff, Moscow, for his research on this miniature.
2 Several portraits of English officers were on display at the exhibition in Brussels dedicated to Autissier. Cf. Autissier 1998, p. 48, no. 24 (1814), p. 55, no. 31 (1815), p. 56, no. 32 (1815). A portrait of the Duke of Wellington (1815) was offered at Sotheby’s London on 4 July 2019, no. 161, and a portrait possibly of Captain Horace Beauchamp Seymour (1791 – 1851) at Philip Mould, London.