Presentation of the restoration of the portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Aumale by the painter Franz Xaver Winterhalter (1805-1873).
The castle of Chantilly celebrates its last owner, the Duke of Aumale on the occasion of the bicentenary of his birth. Despite the legacy of the prince’s personal collections to the Institut de France, no youthful portrait of Henri d'Orléans (1822-1897), the fifth son of King Louis-Philippe (1773-1850) was included in the Condé Museum’s reserves. Two important paintings, one representing the Duke of Aumale, and the second, his wife Marie-Caroline de Bourbon-Siciles (1822-1869) were rediscovered following a campaign of decennial recognition at the Palace of Versailles. The confrontation of the digitized inventory of museums has made it possible to partially retrace the history of these works whose workshop copies are presented in the gallery of portraits of the Orléans family. This new analysis validated the hypothesis that these were the originals commissioned in 1843 and 1844 from Franz Xaver Winterhalter (1805-1873). Famous artist in his time, the official painter of the house of Orléans has renewed the genre of the portrait in a natural style, more modern. The two paintings that would have joined the collections of the Palace of Versailles the day after the fall of the July Monarchy in 1848, were officially deposited in the Museum Condé this year. The necessary restoration of the paintings will take place initially in the antenna of the Petite Ecurie de Versailles and then at the Château de Chantilly. The Association des Amis du Musée Condé finances the project.