A fine portrait of Bon Albert Briois de Beaumetz ( 1755-1801?). He was a French nobleman heavily involved in the early years of the French Revolution as a prominent constitutional monarchist.
Born in Arras, Albert de Beaumetz was the son of an ardent royalist and a premier president of the Superior Council of Artois, a judiciary body of the ancien regime. Beaumetz succeeded his father in 1785, establishing himself as a highly influential legal mind and actively shaped France’s new legal system. He published major foundational texts to reform criminal justice. He was the lover of Jeann Louise Henriette Genest Campan, a lady-in-waiting for Marie Antoinette and reader to Louis XV’s daughters, Victoire, Sophie and Louise. In 1775 he married Marie-Louise de Creny, a noblewoman from Artois.
In the local elections, Bon Albert de Beaumetz was elected as a member by the Second Estate of the Artois, while Maximilien Robespierre managed to get elected by the Third Estate. As the Revolution grew increasingly radical, Beaumetz used his position to try to curb the rising revolutionary violence and block early elements of the Terror, though his efforts ultimately proved ineffective. His decision to exclude Maximilien Robespierre from a critical 1789 election planning meeting fueled a deep, lasting animosity between the former friends.
After the fall of the monarchy (10 August 1792), Beaumetz emigrated to Germany, England then the United States. He married the daughter of the first United States Secretary of War, Henry Knox. He was naturalised as an American citizen. In May 1796, accompanied by his wife, he travelled to Calcutta where he disappeared from history after a last letter sent by him in March 1801.
The text ( added posthumously ) at the base of the portrait reads:
Left: Droit e Justice, Nous, amis, qui loin des batailles, Succombons dans l’obscurité, Vouons du moins nos funérailles, A la France, à la liberté
In English: Right and Justice, we, friends, who far from the battlefields, fall into obscurity, let us at least dedicate our funeral rites, to France and to liberty
Right: Droit e Glorie, Mourir pour la Patrie, C’est le sort le plus beau, le plus digne d’envie
In English: Right and Glory, to die for one’s country, is the fairest fate, the one most worthy of envy
Written in 1847 by Alexandre Dumas & Auguste Maquet ( co autors of The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musteteers), The Chant of the Girondins was the national anthem from 1848 – 1852. The lines of the refrain were borrowed from the 1792 song Roland à Roncevaux by Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle, famously known as the author of the French national anthem, La Marseillaise.
H 710mm, W 550mm
Additional photos:
The coat of arms of the French commune Beaumetz, which is a modified version of the Briois de Beaumetz family arms, the last lords of the village until 1789.
Jeann Louise Henriette Genest Campan.
$4,200.00