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A pleasant little canine portrait made a royal displaying at Sotheby’s this morning, the place it offered for $279,400 together with charges — practically 56 occasions its excessive estimate of $5,000. Jacques Barthélémy Delamarre’s late 18th-century oil portray is regarded as an outline of Marie Antoinette’s “Pompon,” one of many French queen’s many canine companions. Thriller shrouds the topic of the portrait, however little is thought in regards to the artist, too.
Jacques Barthélémy Delamarre was accepted into the Académie de St-Luc in Paris in 1777 and painted within the late 18th and early nineteenth centuries. Other than these information, Sotheby’s Outdated Masters Specialist Elisabeth Lobkowicz advised Hyperallergic, all that’s recognized is that Delamarre’s small physique of labor nearly completely depicts variations of this precise canine and different small pets, together with cats and rabbits.
Delamarre’s different portraits of Pompon present the canine consuming biscuits and lounging on a lush purple cushion. Lobkowicz mentioned that though these compositions have traditionally been thought to painting Pompon, this notion has not been confirmed with certainty.
Lobkowicz mentioned the canine’s breed stays a degree of debate as nicely: “Is it a poodle? Is it a King Charles spaniel? Or is it one other toy breed altogether?” What is thought is that “Pompon” sported a ridiculous coiffure, very like these famously showcased by Marie Antoinette.
Antoinette’s house in Versailles was crammed with pets together with cats and monkeys. Antoinette owned tiny pups till she was executed in 1793. She even had a gilded velvet and silk canine kennel, now within the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork’s assortment.
In response to a label on the again of Delamarre’s portray, the final time the work hit the public sale block was in 1986, when Bonhams provided it with an estimate of $3,000–5,000.
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