The Duchess de Berry

Artist William Watson (London, England, active 1828 - 1866)

Associated Marie-Caroline of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, Duchess of Berry (Caserta Palace, Naples, Italy, 1798 - 1870)

Date1830

Mediumoil on ivory

ClassificationsPaintings And Drawings

DimensionsSight Size: Height: 11.2 cm, Width: 8.6 cm

CopyrightOut of copyright - CC0

LocationView by Appointment - Aberdeen Treasure Hub

Object numberABDAG004693

Keywords

About MeBy the time this portrait was painted the sitter was the Dowager Duchess of Berry. She was born in 1798 as Caroline (Maria Carolina Ferdinanda Luise) of Naples and Sicily and was the daughter of the future King Francis I of the Two Sicilies and his first wife, Maria Clementina of Austria.

In 1816 Caroline married the nephew of Louis XVIII of France, Charles Ferdinand d'Artois, duc de Berry and lived with him at the Élysée Palace. After the assassination of her husband in 1820 she became an important figure during the Bourbon Restoration. When Charles X was overthrown during the July Revolution of 1830 she was forced to flee France and lived in Bath and in Edinburgh. This portrait however was painteed on 18th February at no. 4 Poland St. Oxford St. London, where Watson had his studio.

The following year she returned to her family in Naples via the Netherlands, Prussia and Austria. Later, however she unsuccessfully attempted to restore the Legitimist Bourbon dynasty during the reign of the Orléanist monarch, King Louis Philippe of the French (1830–1848) - Alexandre Dumas was to write two stories about her and her plotting. Her failed rebellion in the Vendée in 1832 was followed by her arrest and imprisonment in November, 1832. She was released in June, 1833 after giving birth to a daughter and revealing her secret marriage to an Italian nobleman, Ettore Carlo Lucchesi-Palli, 8th Duke della Grazia. She had four children with her first husband and five more with the Duke della Grazia. In 1844, she and her husband purchased the beautiful palazzo Ca' Vendramin Calergi on the Grand Canal in Venice from the last member of the Vendramin family line. In the turmoil of the Risorgimento, she was forced to sell the palazzo to her grandson, Prince Henry, Count of Bardi, and many of its fine works of art were auctioned in Paris. She returned to Sicily, ignored by other members of the House of Bourbon, and died near Graz (Austria-Hungary) in 1870.

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The Duchess (1798-1870), married a nephew of France's Louis XVIII and was an important figure in the Bourbon Restoration, but forced to flee to Britain when it failed.