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LOUIS GAUFFIER
Poitiers 1762 – 1801 Livorno

Portrait of André-François Miot, Envoy of the French Republic
to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, 1797

Alternatively titled La Famille Miot.
Oil on canvas; 68 x 88 cm (26 3/4 x 34 3/4 in)
Signed and dated lower left : L. Gauffier Flor.ce , l’an IVeme de la rép.e

PROVENANCE : RELATED WORK:
Comte Miot de Melito (1762-1841), until L’ambassadeur Miot et sa famille, oil sketch, Musée
1841.1 du Château de Versailles, inv. no. M V 4852.
Comtesse Rosalie d’Fleischmann2, (1792-1866), Portrait de Miot, undated, cited as conserved in the
née Miot de Melito, until 1866. collection of the Miot family by Crozet, who prob-
Colonel Comte Charles Astorg, cousin and heir of ably confused this work with the present picture.
Rosalie d’Fleischmann, until 1879.
(Probably) Geneviève Astorg (née de l’Estrade), T he son of a workman employed at the
wife of the preceeding, at the Château des Arsenal at Rochefort3, it was probably the
Moulins Neufs, Lavau in theYonne, and; sponsorship of a member of the powerful
Thence by descent. Vaudreuil family who was a Commissioner
for naval affairs that enabled the young Gauffier to
LITERATURE: enter the Paris studio of Hugues Taraval (1729-1785).
P. Marmottan, ‘Le peintre Louis Gauffier’, in In 1784, he was awarded the Prix de Rome, an hon-
Gazette de Beaux-Arts, no. 4, xiii, 1926, pp. 281-300. our he shared with Jean-Germain Drouais (1763-
M. R. Crozet, ‘Louis Gauffier, 1762-1801’, in 1788) David’s favourite pupil.4 In late November of
Bull. Soc. Hist. A.Fr., 1941-1944, p. 100-113.

1. Miot, who commissioned and sat for the painting, lived at 6 rue des Beaux-Arts, Paris after 1832.
2. Daughter and sole heir of the Comte Miot de Melito she married General Comte Christian Guillaume d’Fleischmann, Ambassador of the King of
Württemberg to the French King Louis-Philippe.
3. L. Moinet, ‘ Le peintre Louis Gauffier’, in Revue de Saintonge et d’Aunis, 1895, pp.435-440.
4. Gauffier was actually awarded the pension that had been attached to the 1779 Prix de Rome which had been held in reserve (the level of entries that
year having been judged of insufficient merit). Drouais was awarded the 1784 Prix de Rome. See S. Lee, ‘Jean-Germain Drouais and the 1784 Prix de
Rome’, in The Burlington Magazine,Vol. 130, No. 1022 (May, 1988), pp. 361-365.

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