Artist/Maker Anne-Marguérite-Joséphine-Henriette Rouillé de Marigny, Baroness Hyde de Neuville (French, 1771–1849)

Guillaume Hide Reading and Study of the Hyde de Neuville Coat of Arms

ca. 1800-1806

Black, white, and red chalk and gray watercolor on parchment

Sheet (irregular): 5 1/4 in. × 4 in. (13.3 × 10.2 cm)

Gift of Mark Emanuel

2018.42.14

Neuville's half-length, profile portrait of a bewigged gentleman, probably depicts her father-in-law, Guillaume Hide, sitting and facing left. At the lower right, she drew the Hyde de Neuville coat of arms. She used the traditional eighteenth-century media of three-colored chalks, but added gray watercolor, one of her earliest preferred media, for volume. It is one of a pair of works by Neuville that employ parchment as a support (the other is 2018.42.15). Guillaume Hide was master of the iron forge and director of the royal factory of La Charité-sur-Loire, which made buttons and hardware. He was naturalized in 1766 and descended from an English (Irish and Scottish) family that had immigrated to France with the Stuarts after the rebellion of 1745 and had settled near La Charité-sur-Loire, between Sancerre and Nevers, on the Loire River. His grandfather, Sir James Hyde, was one of the Jacobites who had followed the Stuarts after the battle of Culloden. About the Artist Born in Sancerre, France into an aristocratic family, Henriette, as she preferred to be called, received an education that probably included drawing lessons. At the fall of the Bastille in 1789, she and her father fled Paris for their country house, Château de L’Estang, where she began her artistic self-education. In 1794, during the height of the French Revolution, she married the handsome and hot-headed Jean Guillaume Hyde de Neuville, an ardent royalist who became involved in conspiracies to reinstate the Bourbon monarchy. In 1800, the couple was imprisoned and forced into hiding under aliases because of his role in the “English Conspiracy.” The baron was also condemned as an outlaw for his alleged participation in a plot to assassinate Napoleon. Fearing for her husband’s safety, the independent baroness attempted to disprove the charges. In 1805, she took her cause directly to Napoleon in a dramatic odyssey across Germany and Austria in pursuit of the French army, finally obtaining an audience with him in Vienna. Impressed with her courage, the Emperor allowed the couple to go into exile. They arrived in New York in 1807, where they stayed for seven years. During their second residency (1816–22), when her husband served as French Minister Plenipotentiary and was made a baron, they lived primarily in Washington, DC, where Henriette became an influential presence and celebrated hostess. After her return to France, the baroness seems to have retired her pen and watercolors. John Quincy Adams described her in his diary as “a woman of excellent temper, amiable disposition . . . profuse charity, yet judicious economy and sound discretion.”

DescriptionHalf-length portrait of a bewigged Guillaume Hide sitting and facing left; at the lower right a study of the Hyde de Neuville coat of arms.

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The Works of Anne Marguérite Joséphine Henriette Rouillé de Marigny, Baroness Hyde de Neuville

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