Drouais, François-Hubert - The Children of the Duc de Bouillon - 1756
Caption from Sotheby's website The present portrait depicts the two sons of the Duc de Bouillon as Montagnards (without the entry to the Salon catalogue of 1757, one would have assumed them to be in the guise of Savoyards as has often been suggested, see Literature). One holds a marmot with a ribbon and the other plays a hurdy-gurdy, both activities associated exclusively with the people of the mountains especially in Savoy and in North Italy (at this time, the area was not French but Italian; Savoy was annexed by France only in 1792). From Watteau and Greuze to Deylen and Charpentier, French artists seem to have been drawn to these characters partly because they were exotic (and available on the streets of Paris) but also because they were considered models of filial affection venturing as they did every winter to Paris to earn money to take back to their families in Savoy. In fact, over one half of the male Savoyards came to Paris every year, including children from about eight years old. As the gastarbeiter of the eighteenth century, they performed the more menial tasks including cleaning streets and chimneys, acting as porters (traditionally, the post of porter at the Hôtel Drouot was a Savoyard even into the 20th century!) . The younger members were street entertainers, playing musical intruments such as hurdy-gurdy, recorders and the like with performing rodents such as squirrels and marmots (carried in cases such as the one on which one of Bouillon's sons sits) or carried boîtes à curiosités, or peep shows, depicting battles, foreign cities or even Louis XV. Their appearance was distinctive-three-quarter length, coarse brown coats, long hair, a slightly disheveled look, all topped by three-cornered hats. Thus, the hurdy-gurdy, the marmot and the marmot box, as well as the peep show were their attributes. (In fact, the marmot seems to have been the emblem of the poor Montagnards according to Toussenel1). Drouais, of course, has dressed the two young noblemen in velvet examples of Montagnard costume with the whitest of linen shirts. The Frick painting, too, upgrades the Savoyard clothes to the point that the velvet jackets are buttoned with gold. Given the tradition that these people were devoted to their families, it must have been most desirable indeed that parents should want their children depicted in such roles. The two boys are Jacques Leopold Charles Godefroy, Prince de Bouillon, who was born in 1746, and his younger brother Charles Louis Godefroy, Prince d'Auvergne, born in 1749, who would have been aged ten and seven, the year the painting was signed and dated. What has not been noted is that over a century earlier the then Duc de Bouillon commissioned a portrait of his children from Pierre Mignard (Honolulu Academy of Arts) which is dated Roma 1647.2 In it, Mignard has depicted the three boys in their finery, one of whom offers cherries to a King Charles spaniel. Drouais must certainly have been aware of a tradition of portraits of the youngest members of the Bouillon family, dressed in their finest clothes, playing with pets. For this reason, and others, Drouais produced one of his most enchanting and beautifully painted portraits. There is a miniature of this painting, possibly by Drouais' father, Hubert, in the Musée du Louvre. The present painting was engraved by Carlo Domenico Melini (1740-1795).