Portrait of a young actress, A de Cailleux, 19th c.

Oil on canvas undoubtedly portraying a young theatre actress.
Signed upper right ‘de Cailleux’, 2nd half of the 19th c.
Alphonse de Cailleux, painter, deputy director of the Louvre museum in Paris in 1836, then director general of fine arts, and finally minister of fine arts under the Second Empire.
A portrait of him is currently in the Musée du Château de Versailles.
He was an artist with little presence on the art market. The Montparnasse frame was intended for him at a later date.
Very beautiful expression of the face, restorations and ‘juices’ passed in the past but which do not harm the work in any way.
103×75 with frame.

Alexandre Alphonse Achille, Viscount of Cailloux or Alphonse de Cailleux. Rouen, 31 December 1788 – Paris 24 May 1876 was a painter, curator and administrator of the French royal museums.

Alphonse de Cailleux studied at the lycée in Rouen. He was aide-de-camp to General Lauriston. In 1825, Alphonse de Cailleux, who was close to the Romantic movement and authors such as Victor Hugo, collaborated with Baron Isidore Juste Severin Taylor and the writer Charles Nodier on Taylor’s work entitled Voyages pittoresques et romantiques dans l’ancienne France. He wrote the section dedicated to Normandy. In 1825, he was appointed Officer of the Legion of Honour while he was Secretary General of the Royal Museums. In 1836, Alphonse de Cailleux was appointed Deputy Director of the Louvre Museum, working with Louis Nicolas Philippe Auguste de Forbin. On the latter’s death, he was appointed Director General of Fine Arts. This role heralded his much later appointment as Minister of Fine Arts. In 1845, he was elected a free member of the Academy of Fine Arts at the Institut de France, as he was not an artist himself. When Louis Philippe was deposed following the Revolution of 1848, Alphonse de Cailleux, a convinced royalist, resigned from all his posts. A portrait of Alphonse de Cailleux, attributed to Georges Rouget, is currently in the Museum of the Palace of Vers