Marie-Antoinette is shown here at the age of 17. She was already married to the future king Louis XVI, and a year later would be queen. She wears formal court dress: a silk gown with embroidered stomacher, needle lace and silver trimmings, and a jewelled necklace. A leader of fashion, Marie-Antoinette was at first celebrated for her taste but came to be criticised for her extravagance. She died at the guillotine in 1793. This painting appears to be one of several versions derived from an earlier portrait of Marie-Antoinette as Hebe, goddess of youth, executed by the same painter Drouais for Louis XV of France in 1772 and currently in the Musée Condé, Chantilly.

This chair and its pair (W.7-1956) were almost certainly part of a suite made in 1788 for Queen Marie-Antoinette's cabinet de toilette at the Palace of Saint-Cloud -- the rest of the suite comprising two further armchairs (one at Versailles, the other sold at Sotheby's New York, 22 October 2005, lot78), a sultane (daybed without a back), a bergere armchair and a fire screen (all in the Metropolitan Museum; inv. no. 41.205.1-3a,b), and a footstool (untraced). The frames were made by the joiner (menuisier) Jean-Baptiste-Claude Sené (1748–1803), carved by an unidentified carver, and painted and gilded by the painter-gilder (peintre-doreur) Louis-François Chatard (c. 1749–1819), who eventually delivered the suite to Saint Cloud. The suite is recorded in an inventory of Saint Cloud taken in 1789. At the top of this chair is carved the monogram MA for Marie-Antoinette, queen to Louis XVI of France. It was probably part of a suite delivered in 1788 to the Château de Saint-Cloud, Sene supplied similar suites of chairs to Versailles and the Tuileries. The armchair bears all the hallmarks of neoclassical style, popular in France after 1775, with its straight, tapering legs and decorative elements which include classical columns with Ionic capitals and laurel and acanthus leaf motifs.

The Sutherland Diamonds, comprising a necklace of twenty large old brilliant-cut diamonds in silver-topped gold collets with two extension lengths and a pair of earrings, are an extraordinary survival amongst British noble jewels: a magnificent and historic collection of diamonds that has been prominently worn at multiple coronations, adapted and reworked over time to suit changing fashions. They might so easily have been broken up were it not for their grandeur, heritage and alleged link with Marie Antoinette. Worn by successive Duchesses of Sutherland from the early Nineteenth Century onwards, the diamonds were the most striking family jewel in the celebrated receptions at Staffordshire House, the grandest town house in London until its sale by the 4th Duke of Sutherland in 1912. Recorded in paintings and film footage of coronations, they were worn by Harriet (1806-1868), wife of the 2nd Duke, and Mistress of the Robes to Queen Victoria, to the Queen’s coronation in 1838 as an enormous upright headband of diamonds. Millicent (1867-1955), wife of the 3rd Duke and Canopy Bearer at the Coronation of Edward VII and Alexandra in 1902 wore the diamonds as a tight choker with a line of diamonds extending down the front, very much in the style of a lavalière of the day. In 1937, Eileen (1891-1943), wife of the 5th Duke, wore them à la mode as a long necklace, or sautoir to the Coronation of George VI and Elizabeth. Tradition links the diamonds to the scandal that contributed to the downfall of Marie Antoinette – the so-called ‘Affair of the Diamond Necklace’. The French queen was implicated in this, one of the grandest jewellery scams in history, and although innocent, her reputation never truly recovered. The connection is unproven, but the size, beauty, and role these diamonds played in royal and aristocratic life in Britain place them among the most remarkable surviving noble jewels.

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