Édouard-Louis Dubufe, the portrait of a noble “élégante”
In a sale dedicated to the Second Empire, this canvas (145 x 90 cm) painted in 1847 should not leave anyone indifferent. Estimated at €5,000/7,000, Portrait d’une élégante, possibly Lucile Ursule Lemachois (1817-1849), wife of Levavasseur, is magnified by an exuberant stuccoed and gilded wooden frame with neo-rocaille decoration…
In a sale dedicated to the Second Empire, this canvas (145 x 90 cm) painted in 1847 should not leave anyone indifferent. Estimated at €5,000/7,000, Portrait d’une élégante, possibly Lucile Ursule Lemachois (1817-1849), wife of Levavasseur, is magnified by an exuberant stuccoed and gilded wooden frame with neo-rocaille decoration of garlands of roses and pomegranates. The young woman, portrayed here two years before her death at the age of 32, was related by marriage to Édouard-Louis Dubufe (1819-1883). Indeed, the composer Charles Gounod (1818-1893), whose first cousin she was, had married Anna Zimmermann, the sister of the painter’s wife, the sculptor Juliette Zimmermann.
See also The Marquise de Galliffet by painter Édouard-Louis Dubufe
Initially ahistory painter trained by his father and Paul Delaroche, Dubufe made a name for himself as a society portraitist, becoming one of the most prominent painters of the Second Empire, and the great “rival” of Franz-Xaver Winterhalter. His most famous portraits are of Napoleon III (1853, Musée des Avelines), Empress Eugénie (1854, Château de Versailles), Madame F. (1850-1851, Musée d’Orsay) and Rosa Bonheur (circa 1857, Versailles).
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