The Empress Maria Theresa (1717 - 1780) as a Widow (after Joseph Ducreux 1735-1802)
Austrian School
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1770 - 1779
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
483 x 381 mm (19 x 15 in)
Place of origin
Austria
Order this imageCollection
Wimpole, Cambridgeshire
NT 207801
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, The Empress Maria Theresa (1717 - 1780) as a Widow, Austrian School, circa 1770s, indistinctly signed and dated. Maria Theresa, who lost her husband, the Emperor Francis I, in 1765, is shown as a widow in a park, adorned with the medal of the Innsbruck Damenstift, which she founded to commemorate her widowhood. She never left off wearing her widow's weeds. The head is taken from Ducreux's portrait in the Vienna Academy. Another large, final (?) version is in Boskovice. Partially after Anton von Maron (1733 - 1808)
Provenance
Bought by Mrs Bambridge from the Old Master Galleries, Davies St, 10th April 1956 as signed and dated 1781, by an artist with an illegible signature - probably Fuger, for £ 150; bequeathed by Elsie Kipling, Mrs George Bambridge (1896 - 1976), daughter of Rudyard Kipling, to the National Trust together with Wimpole Hall, all its contents and an estate of 3,000 acres
Credit line
Wimpole Hall, The Bambridge Collection (National Trust)
Makers and roles
Austrian School, artist after Joseph Ducreux (Nancy 1735 - Paris 1802), artist