Besides the younger Petitot, a number of imitators and copyists of the elder may be named. Amongst these were his contemporaries Perrot and Chatillon, the engraver. Then there is Jacques Philippe Ferrand, who studied under Mignard; he was a member of the Academy and a valet-de-chambre to Louis XIV. His father, Louis Ferrand, had been physician to the preceding monarch. At a later date we find Mademoiselle Chavant, who painted at Sèvres at the end of the eighteenth century; Moïse Constantin, who was an enameller, and also painted on porcelain. He was a Genevese, but lived at Paris, and was painter to the King, 1726-8. Four more Genevese, also enamellers, may be named, all of whom painted copies of Petitot, namely, Alexandre de la Chana, Dufey, Lambert, and J. G. Soutter.
When we come to know of all these imitators or followers of Petitot, we begin to understand the enormous quantity of work attributed to him by the uninitiated; but difficult as it may be for the unpractised eye to discriminate, there may very well be a large number of works which are from the hand of Petitot himself, because, as we have seen, he spent a long and laborious life, and there was in his time a demand for this particular kind of portraiture far in excess of anything like modern requirements. That demand arose from the use of these enamel portraits for snuff-boxes, which were then so largely employed, not only for personal use, but as diplomatic presents. The amount of taste and labour bestowed upon these objects may be realised by those who will study the Le Noir Collection at the Louvre, the many fine pieces at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and last, but not least, those shown at Hertford House. They were, of course, extremely expensive, and such was their artistic charm that we do not wonder at people making a hobby of collecting them. Thus, we are told, Frederick the Great owned 1,500 snuff-boxes; then there was the Comte de Brieulle, the favourite minister of the King of Saxony, who was said to have owned 300 costumes, with a walking-stick and snuff-box appropriate to each. This was the nobleman of whom Frederick the Great remarked that he had "tant de perruques et si peu de tête."
R. COSWAY, R.A.
GEORGE IV. WHEN PRINCE OF WALES.
(Shaftesbury family.)
These boits aux portraits were in fashionable use during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. We have seen how Louis XIV. employed Petitot as far back as 1645, and we read of a portrait of Louis XVI. when Dauphin being sent to Marie Antoinette on her arrival in 1770. The picture was by P. A. Hall, the most distinguished miniaturist in France, and cost 2,664 francs. The box in which it was mounted contained seventy-five brilliants, costing over seventy-eight thousand francs, or nearly thirty times as much. The production of portraits for these snuff-boxes assumed the proportions of a manufactory at the French Court during the eighteenth century; thus the archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs contain entries showing that enamel portraits were made by the dozen, and one Bruckmann, a Swede, supplied as many as nineteen at a time.
I may mention with regard to the illustrations of Petitot here shown that the portrait of Cardinal Richelieu is mounted in a lovely chased gold and jasper snuff-box, which once belonged to the King of Saxony. The Louis XIV. is also upon a snuff-box. The Cardinal Mazarin comes from the Earl of Carlisle's celebrated collection at Castle Howard.
The Charles I. on a preceding page was at Strawberry Hill, and Walpole thus speaks of it: "I have a fine head of Charles I., for which he probably sat, as it is not like any I have seen by Van Dyck. My portrait came from one of his [Petitot's] sons, who was a Major in our service, and died a Major-General at Northallerton 1764." This now belongs to the Burdett-Coutts Collection, as does the Charles II., the extremely fine James II., and also, I may remind the reader, the lovely Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans, perhaps the most beautiful of all his works, and reproduced on p. 151.
A few words may be said in conclusion as to the painter's method. He is reported to have generally used plates of gold or silver, seldom copper, for the foundation of his miniatures. His signed works are excessively rare. The Duke of Buckingham, dated 1640, to which I have already referred, is signed, however, and in the Louvre there is an example bearing a date, but these are exceptions. The beautiful borders which, in the shape of wreaths of enamelled flowers, are to be met with around his works, such as that in the Jones Collection, for example, are the work of Jules Legarré, goldsmith to the King, with whom there is little doubt Jean Petitot must have worked in the execution of commissions for the Court.
R. COSWAY, R.A.