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Portrait of Charles Grant, vicomte de Vaux, in uniform as a Lieutenant Colonel of the Garde du Roi, attended by his groom with their horses, a fortress beyond

(1745 to 1800 France)

Colnaghi

Painted for presentation by the sitter to Sir James Grant of Grant, 8th Bt. (1738-1811), in 1781-2 and by descent at Castle Grant, Aberdeenshire, and Cullen House, Banffshire, through his sons, Lewis Alexander, 5th Earl of Seafield and Francis William, 6th Earl of Seafield, to Ian, 13th Earl of Seafield; Christie's sale on the premises, Cullen House, 23 September 1974, lot 530.

[Sir] W. Fraser, The Chiefs of Grant, Edinburgh, 1883, I, p. 536, no. 68, II, pp. 541, 544, and 546-50.

Charles Grant, vicomte de Vaux (1749 - circa 1818), was a lieutenant colonel in the Scots Company of the French Garde du Roi. Despite his French upbringing, the vicomte claimed descent from the Scottish Grant family and this striking portrait is linked with his successful endeavours to secure recognition of his claim.

The background of the present portrait is detailed in a series of letters to Sir James Grant, head of the Grant family in Scotland, from his kinsman, Baron Grant de Blairfindy, a catholic in the service of King Louis XVI, who was colonel of the Légion Royale. On 30 January 1781 Blairfindy wrote to Sir James Grant, enclosing a 'memorial', setting out the vicomte de Vaux’s descent from his ancestor Sir John Grant - who had served under Wallace and had been imprisioned in London in 1297. “His future fortune depends on his being acknowledg'd [by] you as chief of the family, which act, authentically documented and sign'd by you and three or four peers of the realm, will be sufficient in this country...”. Sir James referred the matter to James Cummyng at the Lyon Office in Edinburgh, who recommended on that Sir James Grant “certify in general terms that the Viscount is an ancient cadet of [his] family”, and that the document be authenticated by the “seal and subscription” of the Lord Lyon. On the basis of this, Blairfindy presented the vicomte de Vaux - as M. de Grant, vicomte de Vaux - to Louis XVI. The vicomte, whose first wife had died, wished to marry the daughter of the President of the States of Brittany, who would only permit the marriage if his descent was acknowledged by Sir James and the Herald Office of Scotland.

In order to convince Sir James of the vicomte de Vaux’s merits, Blairfindy wrote extolling his virtues and “as to his figure”, wrote Blairfindy in March 1782, referring for the first time to the Colnaghi picture, “you are to have his portrait... It is a very fine piece, ten feet high, etc. and represents himself, groom and horses as they are in full life and hight. This he intends you should putt up in Castle Grant.”

In return Sir James offered to send highland dress to the vicomte and discussed an exchange of portraits with Blairfindy who recommended, that if Sir James sent his portrait, it should be :“En tableau ordinaire and not of such a prodigious size as his is of 10 feet high. Had he consulted me before to get it made I would have given him the same advice. It is done by the King's first painter and of the same size as those the King sends of himself to the foreign courts”.

As a result of this reference to “the King's first painter”, the picture was at one time attributed to Jean-Baptiste-Marie Pierre but the attribution to Louis-Rolland Trinquesse proposed by Colin Bailey is much more plausible stylistically. The slightly bibulous nose of the sitter can be compared with that of the Portrait of Jacques-Denis Antoine of 1744 (private collection, France) and there are close parallels between the physiognomy and the hands of the young man presenting the boot and the pose of the young gallant in the Interior scene with two women and a gentleman of 1776 (recently with Maurice Segoura Gallery, New York). The closest parallel, though, is with the Portrait of the Duc de Cossé-Brissac , a similarly flamboyant portrait where the Duke’s grandeur is emphasised by the attentions of a courtly young man. While Trinquesse’s portraits of female sitters are gentle and straightforward depictions in pastel colours (Young Girl, 1777, Louvre, Paris), his male portraits, of which the Colnaghi picture is a superb example, display a sombre grandeur and flamboyant dynamism.