Overall: 80cm (31.5in) x 66.5cm (25.8in)
Provenance: Princess Micaela D’Orleans, SAR Comtesse de Paris (1938-2022)
Oil on canvas. Half length portrait of Capitaine Gaudet looking slightly right, his powdered hair worn en queue, in dress uniform comprising dark blue ‘habit à la française’ with regulation red collar and cuffs, piped white, white turnbacks and lapels piped red, gold lace fringed left epaulette denoting the rank of captain, pre-1804 pattern gorget with white stock and shoulder belt; with sword and bicorne hat distinguished by the national cockade, gold lace and red over white plume showing to his left. Inscribed upper right, ‘J.A.J.P. Gaudet Capitaine / à la 87ème demi brigade / né en 1773 et peint / en Janvier 1803’. Contained in period gilt wood frame.
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Captaine J.A.J.P. Gaudet (1773-1807), Chevalier du Couronne de Fer, served in the 6ème Compagnie du Second Bataillon de la 87ème Demi Brigade d’Infanterie de Ligne. He was an aide-de-camp to General Jean-Pierre Travot; staff officer to Generals Gaultier and Dombrowski in Army of Italy. He was wounded in action during the war of the Third Coalition, and promoted by Marshal Massena for gallantry at the fording of the Isonzo river in late 1805 (An XIV). In 1803 he married Élisabeth-Anne-Agathe, daughter of Moïse VAUDRY DE LAVEY and ‘died in 1808 aboard the English ship ……’
Born on 19 February 1773 in eastern France at Poligny, in the ancient Burgundian county of Franche-Comté, where serfdom was widely practised until as late as 1787, the sitter’s early military career is linked to that of local hero General Jean-Pierre Travot whose statue still stands in the main square at Poligny, Jura, and who is commemorated on the Arc de Triomphe. Both 24 year-old Travot and 19 year-old Gaudet were liable to be caught up in the levée en masse of 1791 whereby all able-bodied men were called on to defend the nation as part of the developing ideology of the patriotic citizen.
Travot, whom Gaudet served as an Aide-de-Camp, was elected Lieutenant-Colonel of the 2e Battaillon de Volontaires raised in the newly created department of Jura. In 1792 he and his men were assigned to the Army of the Rhine, and in late 1793 to the Army of the West to serve against the Catholic and Royalist counter-revolution the Vendée. Travot defeated the rebel leader General Francois Charette at Bruffière in 1796, and later took him prisoner, prior to ‘trial’ and execution by firing squad.
Gaudet was next appointed to the staff of General Gaultier, commanding the Tuscany Division with the task of supporting the Grand Duchy’s government with a military and political structure. However, in 1799 Gaultier had proved ‘too old to be a good field officer, delegating the conduct of the occupation to his brigadiers, Miollis and Vignolle. From his seat in Florence he assisted in the splitting of the division into a lot of micro garrisons, too weak to destroy the insurgents’ bands.'
Having demonstrated sufficient revolutionary zeal, Gaudet next appears as a Lieutenant of Compagnie de Carabiniers Volontaires du Premier Consul. It is said that this unit was created by Napoleon Bonaparte’s consular decree of 8 March 1800, by which the First Consul made a bid for the goodwill of the lesser nobility and wealthy bourgeoisie disconcerted by the Revolution - Viz. - ‘French citizens other than those named in Article 2 who, in this extraordinary circumstance, wish to accompany the First Consul and participate in the perils and glory of the upcoming campaign will register with the prefects and sub-prefects. The Minister of War will give the necessary orders for them to be formed into volunteer battalions. Those who have the means to procure horses will be formed into volunteer squadrons. They will be definitively organized in Dijon and the officers will be appointed by the First Consul.’
Armed with his junior officer’s commission from Bonaparte, Gaudet presumably joined the volunteers at Dijon where they were formed into a light infantry battalion of nine chasseur companies and one of carabiniers, under the title of Battalion of Reserve Volunteers. The carabinier company to which Gaudet belonged may be assumed to be the elite of the battalion and were theoretically at least its shock troops. By October 1800 the battalion was in Italy whence the chasseur companies were transferred to the 52e Demi-brigade. Gaudet’s carabiniers meanwhile were detached to the Army of Grisons (Helvetic Republic) to serve in the Reserve Division under Général de Division Rey, alongside 15th Légère Demi-brigade (789), 14th Demi-brigade (1417), 3e Demi-brigade d'Orient (2 gren coys) (103) and 7th Miner Company (26). In the winter of 1800-01 the Army was ordered across the Alps - an achievement comparable with Bonaparte's passage of the St Bernard - and routed the Austrians at Mincio. Gaudet’s company latterly ‘formed part of the Guard of the general in chief of the army of the Graubünden …’
The Army of Grisons was broken up the following spring and in May 1801 at the suggestion of Inspector General of the troops, General Clancaux, Gaudet’s company, then comprising some 3 officers and 78 men, was assigned to the ‘87th Demi-brigade to continue its service there.’
Gaudet’s posting to the 6th company however was short lived as he was soon seconded to serve on the staff officer of Divisional General Jan Henryk Dombrowski (1755–1818), the Polish patriot who took French service in 1795 and swelled the ranks of the Army of Italy in 1798 with some 6,000 Poles. Between 1802 and 1803 Dombrowski was in the service of Napoleon’s short lived Republic of Italy with its capital at Milan. In 1803, the same year the present portrait was made, Gaudet married Élisabeth-Anne-Agathe, daughter of Moïse Vaudry de Lavey; at which time both battalions of the 87th Line were at Bergamo in northern Italy. Moreover in 1803 the 87e Régiment d’Infanterie de Ligne was disbanded; with the regimental number 87 being left vacant for the duration of the Empire.
In the late autumn of 1805 at the start of the War of Third Coalition (1805-06), we find Gaudet being promoted to Chef de Bataillon (Major) by Marshal of the Empire Masséna (1758-1817). Masséna had been ordered into northern Italy to prevent the Austrians reinforcing the Danube front where Napoleon was embarking on his Ulm campaign. To this end Masséna occupied Verona and, despite a numerical disadvantage, drove the Austrians back towards Venice, in the course of which Gaudet was wounded and distinguished himself by his bravery at the crossing of the Isonzo river on 18 November 1805. Gaudet was awarded the Order of the Iron Crown by the decree of Napoleon’s able stepson Prince Eugène de Beauharnais, Viceroy of Italy, by a decree dated 20 June 1807, becoming one of 500 knights.