Artemis de Paris
On Robert Gence's "Portrait de chasseresse"
Hello lovely readers and welcome to Idiot Parade.
This newsletter marks the first entry in a still-unnamed series of short essays on individual works of art. For now, I’ll publish one per month. The works discussed will span art history, country of origin, medium, etc.—in fact the only real criteria will be that the artwork is worth discussing and not already über famous. Comments will be open to all and entries will be free to read. That being said…
Gun to my head, my favorite painting in Paris is an early 18th century portrait by Robert Gence. It is not a terribly important work to art history, and we know relatively little about it. A proper photograph of it not in situ doesn’t seem to exist online. It’s called Portrait de chasseresse (Portrait of a Huntress) purely out of necessity, the subject’s identity having been lost. It hangs in the salon de compagnie of the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature in the 3rd arrondissement, flanked on both sides by shadowy still lifes of dead animals.
Gence, like most painters of his era, was a working craftsman, a brush-for-hire. His best gig was a handful of portraits of Maria Anna of Neuburg, the Bavarian princess who became Queen of Spain upon marrying Charles II in 1689. In death, Gence has seen mostly diminishing returns. His 1713 portrait of the nobleman Jean-Joseph de Pons fetched $67,000 at a 1986 auction of Old Masters at Christie’s, then reappeared in 2022 at a far more modest valuation of €25,000 - €35,000.1
Portrait de chasseresse, however, is a showstopper and quite possibly Gence’s best work. The huntress gazes directly at us, her chin tipped ever so slightly downwards. Her stance is stately but not stiff, and there’s an air of lithe casualness in her gesture. A young black manservant—slavery was by then illegal in France—looks at her attentively, leash in hand. He wears a shimmering stocking cap that wraps around his forehead in a way that resembles a tasseled turban. She has no doubt overseen the creation of his wardrobe, and his sartorial finery both reinforces and is eclipsed by her own. On our huntress: a cerulean velvet riding habit lavishly trimmed with gold, worn over a ruffled chemise, and topped with a fur-lined tricorne. A black silk ribbon tied into a neat bow conceals the skin of her throat.
In her right hand she grasps the barrel of a rifle, not too tightly. The butt of the gun rests on the ground near her trophies, two fowls and a hare. One hound paws at her skirts, while the other two, held by her manservant, await a command. In the background stands a three-story country house. It is most certainly just one of several residences.
Perhaps helped along by our ignorance of the noblewoman’s identity, Gence now offers us an Artemis of the ancien régime. Here is the archetypal huntress-goddess rendered in the language of 18th century aristocratic portraiture.
Lurking behind the huntress’s self-satisfied smile is an elegant viciousness. She is eminently cultivated and deadly. She dominates the frame, and her dominance extends in multiple directions: race, class, species. The animals she cannot domesticate lie dead at her feet, and the ones she has domesticated look up at her pleadingly. Every sentient being in the portrait exists to serve her, even the dead ones. She is the only figure that meets the eye of the viewer; all the others are locked in states of subservience. Nature itself bends to her will, bound and tamed in the form of the manicured lawn leading to the mansion.
A lord and husband—the only would-be challenge to her total authority—is absent. She is no innocent, however, and in his absence she projects domination of the male sex. The ease with which she holds the phallic end of the rifle and her demonstrable skill in using it allude to a lethal femininity. She could be the Marquise de Merteuil of Dangerous Liaisons on a sojourn from courtly scheming at Versailles. On the subject of ruthless women the French are connoisseurs: this huntress, the Marquise de Merteuil, the Marquis de Sade’s Juliette, every belle dame sans mercy. There’s a reason we don’t bother to translate the term femme fatale.
Gence’s huntress is the opposite of the armored Athena, killing for glory or ideals or conquest. Instead this 18th century Artemis kills for sport and for pleasure, for the thrill of the chase and the satisfaction of the capture. She enjoys luxury and her status. She is unencumbered by husband or children without appearing at all naïvely virginal. Power suits her as naturally as her riding habit. She is, to return to the Marquise de Merteuil, a virtuoso of deceit. Beauty masks her bloodlust. She is a savage disguised as an aristocrat.
Sources: Christie’s and Invaluable