ELIZABETH CRAVEN AND HER WORLD

This portrait in oils of Adrienne, Comtesse de Tessé, the foster mother of Sophie de Tott, was reproduced in the late François Schlumberger's book Chaville et Viroflay , published in 1997. It portrays her in a very sympathetic manner, as a thoughtful, gentle and sensitive person. She is dressed in a delicate shade of cream with trimmings of pale salmon pink. The light seems to bathe her in an almost golden hue, allowing the gown and her skin to blend into each other without any harsh boundaries. We know that Mme de Tessé was not considered beautiful but the portrait depicts her as gracious and kind. There is something relaxed and informal about her posture that is very pleasing and gives the impression that we are meeting her on intimate terms. Schlumberger said that the original painting was at the time of publication in the private collection of a certain Monsieur Léotard, a descendant of the family of the Comte de Mun, a close friend of the Tessé family. M. Léotard ...

Sophie de Tott by Vigée-Lebrun Of all the emigrés who were welcomed to Brandenburgh House by Elizabeth Craven in the aftermath of the French Revolution, none was more remarkable than Sophie de Tott. She was an artist who exhibited her paintings at the British Royal Academy and when she came to stay at Brandenburgh House she painted portraits of Elizabeth's second husband the Margrave of Anspach and her son Keppel. Madame de Tott had once lived in Paris among the highest French aristocracy. As a girl she had been adopted by a rich Countess and lived in the heart of the capital, meeting all the leading intellectuals and enjoying the most cultivated salons. Laudatory poems had been written about her. She had known Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Lafayette, Madame de Stael and Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun who painted this oval portrait of her in 1786. Since fleeing from Paris in the Revolution of 1789 she had lived in Switzerland and Germany, earning a living with her paintbrush. When...