Nationalmuseum acquires portrait by Adolf Ulrik Wertmuller

Nationalmuseum’s collection of Swedish-French paintings from the 18th century now includes a portrait painted by Adolf Ulrik Wertmüller. It depicts Henri Bertholet-Campan, the son of the French Queen’s First Lady of the Bedchamber Henriette Genet-Campan. The acquisition adds an important piece to the fascinating puzzle of Wertmüller’s portrait of Marie Antoinette.

Painted in autumn 1786, the portrait depicts the two-year-old Henri Bertholet-Campan with his dog Aline in the English landscape garden at the family’s summer house in Croissy outside Paris. The painting was exhibited at the Salon of 1787, but under the rather anonymous title of A child playing with a dog.

Adolf Ulrik Wertmüller (1751–1811) trained under his second cousin Alexander Roslin in Paris and studied at the French Academy in Rome. When Wertmüller returned to the French capital in spring 1781, he found it difficult to obtain work as a portraitist and instead earned his keep as a copyist at Roslin’s studio. Here he was discovered by the Swedish Ambassador Gustaf Filip Creutz, who made several important commissions. This in turn resulted in Gustav III convincing France’s Queen Marie Antoinette, during his stay in Paris in the summer of 1784, to let Wertmüller paint her portrait as a gift to the Swedish King. The portrait is currently held in the collections of Nationalmuseum. www.nationalmuseum.se