Lot 249: Jacques Guillaume Lucien Amans (French, 1801-1888,

Jacques Guillaume Lucien Amans (French, 1801-1888, active New Orleans 1836-1856), "Portrait of Augustine Massicot Tanneret (1825-1884)", oil on canvas, signed upper left, 36 3/4 in. x 29 1/4 in., in an antique carved, gessoed and giltwood frame.

Provenance: Descended in the Ellis/Denis/Beauvais-Decuir family. Note: Emile Tanneret, the son of Charles Adolphe Tanneret (b. 1790) of Saint-Domingue and Louise Suzanne Antoinette de Beauvais (1791-1872) of Pointe Coupee, Louisiana, married Augustine Massicot of Louisiana in the 1840s. A wealthy sugar planter, Emile Tanneret is listed in the 1850, 1860, and 1880 Federal Censuses as a Point Coupée resident, along with his mother, his brother, Adolphe, and his son, Raoul. His half-sister, Antoinette Decuir, daughter of Louise de Beauvais and Antoine Decuir, whose portrait was sold in these rooms as lot 444 in May, 2010, is also listed as a planter in Pointe Coupée on the same page of the 1850 Federal Census. This portrait and the following lot are the same size and proportion as the Antoinette Decuir portrait, and could easily have been done in either Point Coupée or New Orleans, as the family had connections to both locales. Amans had previously painted a portrait of Louise Suzanne Antoinette de Beauvais, Mme. Antoine Decuir, in c. 1835-40; it now hangs at Parlange Plantation. A receipt for two portraits, one of Mme. Decuir, and one of her daughter, exists in the Pointe Coupee Courthouse Records and has been compiled and translated by Creole West Productions. It reads "Received from Madame Descuirs [sic]/ the sum of 300 piastres for/ her portrait and that of her daughter/ New Orleans 1842/J. Amans." Special thanks to Julie Eshelman-Lee of Creole West Productions for her assistance in research on these portraits.