Marie Thérèse Charlotte de Bourbon, Duchess of Angoulême

Marie Thérèse Charlotte (1778–1851) was the eldest daughter of King Louis XVI of France and his wife, Marie Antoinette. When her parents were executed by guillotine, she was 14 years old and the sole survivor of the royal family. As the daughter of the king, she was in constant danger during the French Revolution. She was temporarily imprisoned and exchanged in 1795 for prominent French prisoners in Vienna. In 1799, she married her cousin, Louis-Antoine d’Artois, Duke of Angoulême. When, in 1824, his father was named King of France as Charles X, she became Duchess of Angoulême with the potential to become queen herself in the future. However, the deposition of her father-in-law and the seizure of power by the House of Orléans in 1830 prevented her husband from ascending the throne as Louis XIX. She died in Vienna in 1851 during her Austrian exile.
Amélie Daubigny created this portrait between 1820 and 1825. The sitter’s attire and hairstyle are reminiscent of portraits of her painted by Antoine-Jean Gros in 1816 and Jean-Baptiste Jacques Augustin in 1818, respectively, and which were distributed as prints. It is thus entirely possible that the Duchess of Angoulême never sat for the miniaturist but that the portrait was painted after templates. In another version, the artist arranged the background differently. In that version, the curtain is the same colour as the lady’s dark green dress, and an additional pillar has been placed on the right edge of the portrait to emphasise her high birth.¹
B. P.