Lot 16
Daniel Dumonstier(Paris 1574-1646)Portrait of Henrietta Maria, Queen of England (1609-1669) in a carved and gilt frame
3 December 2025, 14:00 GMT
London, New Bond Street£2,000 - £3,000
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Daniel Dumonstier (Paris 1574-1646)
Portrait of Henrietta Maria, Queen of England (1609-1669)
signed and dated 'peinte ce 4 mars/par D.Dumonstier/1645' (upper left) and inscribed by another hand on a 17th century label attached to the mount 'Portraite et beauté de très puissante princesse Henriette Marie de france Reyne de la grande Bretagne'
graphite on paper
18.5 x 14.5cm (7 1/4 x 5 11/16in).
in a carved and gilt frame
signed and dated 'peinte ce 4 mars/par D.Dumonstier/1645' (upper left) and inscribed by another hand on a 17th century label attached to the mount 'Portraite et beauté de très puissante princesse Henriette Marie de france Reyne de la grande Bretagne'
graphite on paper
18.5 x 14.5cm (7 1/4 x 5 11/16in).
in a carved and gilt frame
Footnotes
Provenance
Sale, Piasa, Paris, 26 March 2009, lot 72
With Philip Mould, London, where acquired by the present owner
Literature
E. Griffey, On Display, Henrietta Maria and the Materials of Magnificence at the Stuart Court, 2016, p. 172, pl. 89
The present study appears to be the only known portrait for which the Queen sat during her period of exile, and it may in fact also be the last portrait done of her from life. Like the Queen, Dumonstier had apartments in the Louvre in 1645, but the two had met before when he drew her likeness in 1625.
At the point this portrait was made England was rocked by civil war. In 1644 the Royalist forces suffered a defeat at the battle of Alresford, and the royalist stronghold at Oxford was beginning to come under pressure - it was no longer deemed a safe place for the Queen who was pregnant with their daughter Henrietta. Charles I and his sons accompanied her as far as Abingdon on her progress to the West Country, away from the eye of the political storm: it was the last time that the King and Queen were to see each other. After enduring a difficult delivery she left her newborn baby in Exeter and sailed to France on a Dutch vessel, focused on raising funds for the Royalist cause from a safe distance.
There is a pathos to this portrait, it is hard not to read in the Queen's face the emotional strain that must have accompanied her through much of the 1640s. She and the King corresponded constantly but separation from her family cannot have been easy. Following his execution in 1649 she devoted herself to her family and her strong Catholic faith, spending much of the 1650s in the convent that she founded at Chaillot, returning to England after the Restoration in 1660.