Nanine Fulchiron (1769 - 1832) - Portrait of Pauline Guérin de Foncin

Portrait of Pauline Guérin de Foncin, aged 4.

1808.
Oil on canvas.
Signed and dated lower left: Fulchiron / 1808. 
H: 129.5; L: 86 cm (51 x 33 ?/? inches)

This portrait of Pauline Guérin de Foncin takes up the iconography of the child portrait developed by the Lemoine sisters and their cousin Jeanne-Élisabeth Gabiou, notably the portrait of Marie-Laëtitia Murat carrying a bust of Napoleon I by the latter executed in 1806 (Fesch museum ). 
Our portrait is also very close (in the treatment of drapery, lace and the presence of the same puppet), to the presumed Portrait of Henri Gabiou with a cart of games, playing at blowing bubbles by Marie-Élisabeth Lemoine or even of his Little Girl with Cherries as for the face.

Pauline Gabrielle Guérin de Foncin (1804-1895) is the daughter of Jean-François Guérin de Foncin, a rich Lyon banker. The portrait was commissioned at the beginning of the Empire by the latter from Nanine Fulchiron.

Daughter of a director of the Compagnie de la Guyana, Nanine Fulchiron studied under Baron Gérard and specialized in monumental portraiture. Its production remains limited to the private domain and has no commercial vocation. So she will never exhibit at the Salon.

Nanine first married the banker Aimé Gabriel Fuchiron in 1789. Widowed in 1817, the following year she married the latter's nephew, the famous politician Jean-Claude Fulchiron, also great cousin of Pauline Guérin de Foncin , model of our table.