French school circa 1810 - Portraits of J de Saint Jullien Desnoeux and his wife

French School circa 1810
Portrait of Jérôme de Saint Jullien Desnoeux (1770-1824)
and Jeanne Thérèse Moreau (1789-1864)
Oil on canvas, and oil on paper mounted on canvas
H. 62 cm; L. 50 cm

Jérôme Charles Georges de Saint Jullien Desnoeux, from a Parisian family, was a merchant, mainly of raw materials. In March 1794, he joined with his father-in-law in an iron trading company.
In 1814, after his marriage to Jeanne Thérèse Moreau, nearly twenty years his junior, he bought the Château de la Noue in St Jean les Deux Jumeaux (Seine et Marne), and became mayor of this commune from 1818 until his death in 1824. This property that the couple acquired with a hundred hectares, extended in 1864 to 400 hectares and was strongly reworked in 1867 by the son-in-law of the couple, Felix Tripier. It has since been destroyed, except for the outbuildings, which can be seen on postcards of the time. Saint Jullien Desnoeux was a member of the Chamber of Commerce of the Seine, and a shareholder of the Banque de France in 1822.
Their grandson, Paul Victor Tripier, was Maître des requêtes at the Conseil d'Etat.

Our pair of portraits was most certainly made after the couple's marriage in 1806. The style is typical of the period and the age of the models seems consistent. The portrait of Jeanne Moreau is an oil on paper, marouflaged on canvas, whose rendering appears obviously smoother than the portrait of Saint Jullien Desnoeux, which is on canvas.