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Portraits en savoyarde and theShepherdess of the Alps: Portraits,Prints, Literature and Fashion inEighteenth-century SwedenDr Carolina Browna

a University of Uppsala, Art History, Box 630, 751 26 Uppsala,SwedenPublished online: 03 Jul 2013.

To cite this article: Dr Carolina Brown (2013) Portraits en savoyarde and the Shepherdess ofthe Alps: Portraits, Prints, Literature and Fashion in Eighteenth-century Sweden, Konsthistorisktidskrift/Journal of Art History, 82:3, 235-251, DOI: 10.1080/00233609.2013.804004

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Portraits en savoyarde and the

Shepherdess of the Alps:

Portraits, Prints, Literature and Fashion in

Eighteenth-century Sweden

Carolina Brown

In a woodland glade, a young woman has

paused, her white complexion gleaming

against the pinkish sky. Straight-backed and

with a high forehead, arched eyebrows and

well-coiffed locks, she makes a striking con-

trast to the gnarled trees that form the rustic

backdrop to the scene (Fig. 1). The coarse

brown woollen fabric of her dress and the

simply knotted headscarf modestly frame the

woman’s beauty. With thoughtful gaze and a

graceful gesture, she cautiously lifts the lid of

the box she is carrying. A contemporary

viewer would have grasped at once that the

woman in this portrait had assumed the role

of a Savoyard, and that the well-known

attributes � the dress with its applique bands,

the kerchief tied under her chin and the box

with its trained marmot � were a reflection of

the en marmotte fashion.

The Savoyards, from the Alpine tracts of

Savoy, were admittedly no newcomers to the

French-dominated culture of the time. Their

seasonal migrations from poor mountain vil-

lages to the larger towns of France were a

recurring feature of the contemporary scene.1

In sentimental upper-class minds, tender feel-

ings were projected onto these people who, with

their hardships and their solicitude for their

families, were seen as moral examples. Around

the middle of that century, writers such as

Salomon Gessner and scientists such as Albrecht

von Haller highlighted the beneficial influence

of the Alpine environment, not least on morals

and the emotions, and held up its inhabitants,

the Savoyards, as models of decency and

sensibility.2 There was a curious interest in

what the upper-class reading public saw as an

exotic, fairy-tale people, markedly pastoral in

character, at the very heart of Europe.

At the same time, the romantic aura to

their itinerant life was reinforced by popular

prints, spreading the image of the simply

dressed but free and happy Savoyard, recog-

nisable from the attributes associated with the

simple entertainment they offered � the

hurdy-gurdy, the magic lantern or peep

show, and the marmot in its box, carried on

a strap on their backs.3 Savoyards figure, for

example, in Claude-Louis Desrais’s drawings

of the lower-class craftsmen, hawkers and

casual labourers of Paris from the second half

of the eighteenth century. In his gallery of the

washerwomen, knife grinders, fan sellers and

rag-and-bone merchants of everyday life, the

Savoyard woman also appears as one of many

identifiable types. The inscriptions on these

drawings echo the cacophony of cries on the

streets: La lanterne magique, piece curieuse;

Nanette, la vielleuse Savoıarde; La marmotte

en vie.4 Jacob Gillberg’s crayon-manner en-

#Taylor & Francis 2013 K O N S T H I S T O R I S K T I D S K R I F T , 2 0 1 3

V o l . 8 2 , N o . 3 , 2 3 5 � 2 5 1 , h t t p : / / d x . d o i . o r g / 1 0 . 1 0 8 0 / 0 0 2 3 3 6 0 9 . 2 0 1 3 . 8 0 4 0 0 4

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graving of a Savoyard playing a hurdy-gurdy,

influenced by originals by Augustin de Saint-

Aubin and others, shows that costume pic-

tures of this kind circulated widely, reaching

as far afield as Sweden (Fig. 2).5

Watteau was one of the first to portray the

Savoyards with faithful attention to detail.

His drawings and paintings later formed the

basis for engravings by Boucher, Caylus and

Jeaurat, but the difference between his rea-

listically depicted tatterdemalions and the

picturesque Savoyards who appeared in the

prints, or in paintings by artists such as

Delyen, Drouais or Greuze, is striking.

Fig. 1. Gustaf Lundberg, Christina Margareta Augusta Tornflycht, Countess Wrede-Sparre af Sundby, 1739. Pastel,

82 �64 cm. Private collection. Photo: Bukowskis.

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Around the middle of the eighteenth century,

Savoyard men and women became estab-

lished pastoral genre figures in visual art,

with their own romanticised and emotionally

charged symbols and conventions. The Savo-

yard theme appeared not only in paintings

and prints, but also in decorative objects such

as porcelain figurines, as well as in literature

and in engraved fashion plates, and conse-

quently also in contemporary dress.

The popularity and impact of literary

fiction helped to reinforce a collective social

identity within the elites of eighteenth-century

Sweden and Europe. Novels, poems and plays

not only became manuals of contemporary

ideals of beauty, but also influenced the way

people thought, felt and acted. They were thus

important components of the identity-creat-

ing process that moulded the upper-class

women of the period. In portraiture, women

manifested their participation in this social

and cultural community by posing with novels

on their laps or assuming the role of particular

fictional characters. Portraits in which the

upper-class women of reality assumed the

role of a shepherdess or Savoyarde likewise

articulated an endeavour to identify with the

heroines of literary fiction and the ideals with

which they were associated. The conscious

roleplay of such images defined the sitter both

as an informed, contemporary consumer of

culture and fashion, and as a figure linked to

the boundless realm of fiction.

New approaches to portraiture

Eighteenth-century portraiture has in recent

decades come to be interpreted from new

angles, relating the genre to a broader social

and cultural context than before. Regarding

the portrait deguise, works by scholars such as

Melissa Hyde, Mary Sheriff, Kathleen Nichol-

son and Sabrina Norlander Eliasson have

provided important reappraisals.6 The pre-

sent study seeks to build on the new

approaches developed in this, chiefly Anglo-

American, research tradition.

Using the Savoyard theme as an example, this

article explores how different media � visual art,

fashion, literature and theatre � could interact to

shape the upper-class culture of the eighteenth

century.7 The focus will be on Sweden, although

it is not possible to isolate the interpretation

of the subject in the far north from the

developments seen in France. The theoretical

underpinnings of the study are drawn pri-

marily from three areas � in themselves

dissimilar, but also related and overlapping.

Fig. 2. Jacob Gillberg, Woman Playing a Hurdy-Gurdy.

Crayon-manner engraving, 6 �10.7 cm. Included in

Gunnar W. Lundberg, Svenskt och franskt 1700-tal i

Institut Tessins samlingar, Malmo, 1972.

P O R T R A I T S EN S A V O Y A R DE A N D T H E S H E P H E R D E S S O F T H E A L P S 237

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One starting point is the interdisciplinary

research tradition focusing on ‘consumption

and manifestations’, which examines portrai-

ture as a tool for different identity creation

processes involved in shaping societal hier-

archies and communities.8 The study also has

a clear affinity with the wide-ranging research

field of visual culture. Placing portraits side

by side with genre paintings, fashion prints,

theatre costumes and other expressions of

eighteenth-century imagery this perspective

will form a key approach in the present

study.9 A third and related point of departure

is to be found in gender studies, where

various aspects of the first two perspectives

are interwoven with questions concerning the

social and cultural construction of gender and

the role of visual art in creating and manifest-

ing such constructions.1 0

The first portrait ‘en savoyarde’ in Sweden

Savoyards clearly appeared from early on in

the gallery of pastoral types, even if portraits

of this kind did not begin to occur more

widely until after the middle of the century.

Alongside shepherds and shepherdesses, Sa-

voyards male and female also featured in the

traditional Wirtschaften and theatre perfor-

mances of the court and the aristocracy.1 1 In

Sweden, the artist Gustaf Lundberg was to

play a decisive role in establishing and

developing the Savoyard theme, painting his

first portrait en savoyarde as early as the

1730s � his pastel of the 25-year-old Augusta

Christina Tornflycht, commissioned by the

Swedish ambassador in Paris, Carl Gustaf

Tessin in 1739 .1 2

Four years earlier, Augusta Tornflycht had

married Count Axel Wrede-Sparre af Sundby,

thereby becoming Tessin’s sister-in-law. Carl

Gustaf Tessin’s influential position at the

Swedish court and among the Swedish social

elite made him an important link between the

upper-class cultures of Sweden and France,

and he played a prominent role in a network

of social relations and cultural and material

transactions. Particular note has been taken of

his ability to direct, with informed assurance,

everything from purchases of art, literature

and fashion to the staging of courtly festiv-

ities, and not uncommonly he seems to have

taken advantage of his superior position as an

»arbiter of taste«. His relationship to Augusta

Tornflycht has also attracted notice. As time

passed, she evidently felt importuned by

Tessin’s attentions, in word and deed. The

brouilleries that resulted, however, ended in a

reconciliation � manifested in his commis-

sioning the portrait from Lundberg. In August

1741 , the likeness of Augusta Tornflycht was

sent to Stockholm, along with much of the

art collection Tessin had acquired in France:

»My dear sister-in-law Augusta’s portrait in

pastel en marchande de marmotte, by Lund-

berg, gilt frame and mirror glass,« Tessin

wrote in the inventory drawn up prior to the

shipment.1 3

A few years later, Lundberg started work

on a Gallery of Beauties for Queen Lovisa

Ulrika at Drottningholm, in which another

portrait of Augusta Tornflycht en savoyarde

was intended to be included.1 4 Tessin, to-

gether with the author Alexis Piron, wrote

epigrams to accompany the pictures, texts

that can also help us to interpret their

subjects:

Le petit dieu, qui fait le bonheur de la vie,

Dans votre cœur mal conseille,

Est une marmotte endormie;

Mais dans vos yeux, belle Sylvie,

C’est un marmot bien eveille.

(Piron)

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L’amour, ruse matois, pour nous pousser la

botte,

Aupres de cette belle imite la marmotte,

Et niche dans un coin pour dormir fait

semblant,

Croyez-moi, c’est un jeu pour blesser les

passans.

(Tessin)1 5

Both men’s epigrams for the portrait of

Augusta highlight the theme of love. Peeping

from the marmot box she is carrying they

imagine the wing and arrow of Cupid. Close

to the heart of this beautiful woman, in other

words, the love god lies in wait in the shape of

a slumbering marmot, ready to ensnare

passers-by. The viewer should beware of the

innocent and unassuming role � clearly it

conceals another identity. The tension, well

known in the pastoral tradition, between the

erotic charge of the love theme and the naive

simplicity and innocence of the role is re-

inforced by the peasant costume so meticu-

lously rendered by Lundberg, combined with

the woman’s elegant posture, soft skin, re-

strained smile and sparkling eyes. The epigram

transforms Augusta into Sylvie, the shepher-

dess heroine of pastoral fiction, and it is none

other than Cupid himself that she carries at

her breast. The portrait thus follows the theme

of disguise familiar from the earliest pastoral

novels. The noblewoman dressed as a shep-

herdess elegantly teases her admirer (and here

the male viewer of the portrait) with her game

of disguise. In the eighteenth century, the

marmot could also be regarded as a female

symbol � the woman guarding her virtue,

symbolised by the animal kept safely in its

box.1 6 Piron’s epigram perhaps adds a further

dimension to the game, turning the Savoyard

woman’s sleeping marmotte, the trained ro-

dent, into a wide-awake marmot � the little

amorino of the epigram’s opening line. Is it

love, or the Savoyarde’s dancing animal, that

this marchande de marmotte is offering as she

lifts the lid of her box a fraction?

When Lundberg painted Augusta Torn-

flycht’s portrait in Paris in the 1730s, he

could find inspiration both in the street life of

his day and in the representations in genre

paintings and prints of the dress of the lower

orders. Clear links between portraiture and

the depiction of Savoyards in these different

categories of images in fact became common

in the course of the century. Tessin’s portrait

commission would have repercussions on

both the French and the Swedish art scene.

A portrait miniature of an unknown upper-

class woman en savoyarde by Jacques Charlier,

an artist influenced by Boucher, for example,

has several features in common with Lund-

berg’s pastel of Tornflycht.1 7 The same is true

of the Savoyard woman painted by Francois

Eisen, who was active in France, although

here the subject has been domesticated by

replacing the wild woodland with a Chardin-

esque interior (Fig. 3). But then this portrait

was a companion piece to one of her hus-

band, and the intended role was that of a

virtuous wife rather than a society beauty.

Lundberg’s portrait was thus no isolated

phenomenon, but can be regarded as part of

the development of the Savoyard theme in

eighteenth-century visual art and literature.

Sweden and France

The portrait of Augusta Tornflycht is impor-

tant as a starting point for Savoyard imagery

in eighteenth-century Sweden. Painted in

Paris by a Swedish artist, depicting a Swedish

model and soon brought to Sweden, it is also

a significant example of the close links be-

tween French visual culture and the Swedish

P O R T R A I T S EN S A V O Y A R DE A N D T H E S H E P H E R D E S S O F T H E A L P S 239

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upper-class context of the century. This con-

nection was also reinforced by the circulation

in Scandinavia of French fashion prints,

underlining the Savoyard subject’s continuing

link to the lifestyle and consumption of

modern France. The Savoyard woman’s ker-

chief, transformed in the engravings into a

sought-after accessory, a fichu en marmotte,

tied around the outside of silk bows, lace caps

and well-powdered hair, also became part of

the Swedish fashion of the salons and streets of

Stockholm (Figs. 4 and 5).

The term ‘Swedish’ in this context is not

unproblematic, however. We are concerned

here, rather, with a relationship between

centre and periphery. As many of the refer-

ence images in this article suggest, the visual

art and elite culture of eighteenth-century

Sweden were very much intertwined with a

boundary-transcending European culture, in

which French models in particular played a

decisive role. The women who appeared in

the portraits were Swedish, and in most cases

they were painted by Swedish artists, but the

culture they were part of and shaped by was

hardly to be regarded as purely Swedish.

Travel, consumption of French literature and

visual art, imports of luxuries and objets d’art

of every kind, and dealings with foreign-

trained Swedish artists gave rise to an elite

Fig. 3. Francois Eisen, Jeune femme montrant une marmotte dans une boıte, 1761. Oil on canvas, 45 �34 cm.

Private collection.

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culture that was cosmopolitan in character

rather than distinctively national. The wealth

of literary echoes in the portraits very much

underscores this international character.

Rather than bringing out the distinctiveness

of Swedish art, eighteenth-century Swedish

portraiture can be seen as an example of a

boundary-crossing European culture.

However, while the development of the

Savoyard theme in Sweden was closely con-

nected to France, there were also specific

differences in its Nordic interpretation.

Fig. 4. Top right: »Bonnet rond avec un mouchoir noue en marmotte . . .«, from Etienne-Claude Voysard after

Claude-Louis Desrais, Gallerie des Modes et Costumes Francais. 2e. Cahier des Nouveaux Costumes Francais

pour les Coeffures, Paris, 1778. Private collection.

P O R T R A I T S EN S A V O Y A R DE A N D T H E S H E P H E R D E S S O F T H E A L P S 241

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Although French fashion prints and novels

were indeed available to the Swedish elite,

other cultural conditions affected the way the

subject was interpreted here. Since the art of

the stage played an important role in its

promotion, the insights and artistic resources

of the dramatic institutions in Stockholm

became crucial to the visualisation and un-

derstanding of the content of the Savoyard

motif. At the edge of European culture, the

expressions of this motif in the North tended

to be less elaborated and less versatile than in

Fig. 5. Top right: »Bonnet au bequot avec un fichu par derriere a la marmote«, from Etienne-Claude Voysard after

Claude-Louis Desrais, Gallerie des Modes et Costumes Francais. 3e. Cahier des Modes Francaises pour les

Coeffures, Paris, 1776. Private collection.

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France. Compared with the flourishing

French imageries on the Savoyard theme,

the portraits executed in Sweden remained

limited to just a few specific types, repeating

the same dress, gestures and attributes. In

addition, Swedish portraits en savoyarde be-

came an exclusively female category. While a

small number of portraits of this fashion also

depicted children, including boys, no adult

male portrait of the type exists.

That said, it must at the same time be

stressed that contact with and knowledge of

French culture remained strong in Scandina-

via throughout the century. The channels

exploiting the modern shepherdess in the

form of the Savoyarde at this time, in every-

thing from novels and sentimental prints to

hurdy-gurdy-playing porcelain figures, had a

similar validity in the culture of the Swedish

upper classes as on the continent. Through

his paintings, Gustaf Lundberg became an

intermediary for contemporary French cul-

ture, and his Swedish patrons were hardly

ignorant of what they wanted.

The development of the Savoyard themein Sweden

In Gustaf Lundberg’s portrait of Ebba Bonde

from 1765 , the evolution of the Savoyard

fashion is clearly discernible (Fig. 6). The

portrait is just one in a long line of similar

likenesses en savoyarde produced by the artist,

mainly in the 1760s. The simply tied head-

scarf has been reduced to a bowed lace hood

that reveals more of the sitter’s flower-

adorned hair. Costly lace also accentuates

the shorter and narrower sleeves of the dress,

which in turn underline the aristocratic pose.

The arm is held out from the body in an

elegant curve, and the gesture of the hand, in

front of the stiffly corseted, silk-covered

bodice, attracts the viewer’s attention in a

new way. With this new Savoyarde a la mode,

Lundberg demonstrates his ability to cater to

his Swedish patrons’ need for French fashion-

ability and at the same time adjust it to

regional conditions. Compared with the

Tornflycht portrait, the costume has become

less specific, and hence more versatile �without the other attributes, such as the

marmot box, it would have been deceptively

like the dress of contemporary fashion.1 8 A

number of portrait examples can serve to

illustrate the impact and the repetitive char-

acter of this new and modified Savoyard type

in Sweden (Figs. 7 �10).

The evolving Savoyard role also proved to

be a literary pose in keeping with the popular

reading of the time � a development also

clearly in evidence in the Swedish elite culture

Fig. 6. Gustaf Lundberg, Ebba Margareta Bonde, Coun-

tess Bonde, 1765. Pastel, 84 �65 cm. Private collec-

tion. Photo: Hans Thorwid.

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Fig. 7. Gustaf Lundberg, Hedvig Catharina Ekeblad,

Countess Piper. Pastel, 66 �50 cm. Private collection.

Photo: Hans Thorwid.

Fig. 8. Gustaf Lundberg, Beata von Rosen, Baro-

ness Falker. Pastel. Private collection. Photo: Hans

Thorwid.

Fig. 9. Gustaf Lundberg, Johanna Maria af Petersen,

Countess Hamilton. Pastel, 65 �50 cm. Private collec-

tion. Photo: Hans Thorwid.

Fig. 10. Gustaf Lundberg, Ulrika Stenbock, Countess

Dohna. Pastel, 65 �50 cm. Royal Swedish Academy of

Letters, History and Antiquities. Photo: Hans Thorwid.

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of the time. It was in the 1760s, above all,

that authors such as Rousseau, Marmontel,

Favart and Desfontaines filled their stories

and plays with Alpine landscapes and their

inhabitants � and Gustaf Lundberg developed

on the Alpine theme by introducing yet

another portrait role. When Katarina Char-

lotta von Langenberg had her portrait

painted, probably in conjunction with her

marriage to the Stockholm merchant Carl

Christopher Arfwedson in 1772 , a role was

chosen which could at once be associated

with feminine virtues and project her as a

well-informed participant in contemporary

upper-class culture (Fig. 11). The combina-

tion of the young woman’s straight-backed,

self-assured elegance, her modern hairstyle

and deep decolletage and, at the same time,

well-chosen details such as the straw hat, the

spindle and the cross hung from her neck,

presents her both as a person of rank and as a

specific character in a fictional world.

When Charlotta von Langenberg’s portrait

was painted, the modern shepherdess had

long been in vogue and her characteristic

attributes had become familiar from theatre

performances, printed librettos and engrav-

ings. Consequently, the role was impossible to

misinterpret. In 1752 , Rousseau had enjoyed

enormous success at the French court with his

comic opera Le devin du village, a work that

quickly spread to the capitals of Europe.1 9

Between 1758 and 1766 , it was performed

repeatedly in Stockholm on the public stage

of the Bollhus Theatre. This success was

interspersed with the Favarts’ version of

Rousseau’s original, Les Amours de Bastien et

Bastienne, staged in Paris in 1753 , which also

recurred on the repertoire of the Bollhus

Theatre in the 1760s.2 0 The opera revolves

around the traditional pastoral love drama

between the naively innocent but capricious

shepherdess and the constant and faithful

shepherd, who after various complications

are united in happy accord. The Alpine theme

offered the novelty value of picturesque

mountain villages and Savoyard-style cos-

tumes. Prints of Madame Favart as the

popular comic opera’s shepherdess Bastienne,

after a painting by Carle Vanloo from 1754 ,

were widely circulated. Dressed in a ribboned

straw hat and clogs, she is shown tending

her cows against a hazy Alpine background

(Fig. 12). Just a few years after Rousseau’s and

the Favarts’ comic operas, the next major

success on the theme of the Alpine shepher-

dess was Marmontel’s story La Bergere des

Alpes (1759), translated into Swedish in 1782

as Den alpiska herdinnan.2 1

The desire to emphasise involvement in

fashionable literary culture � not just as a

Fig. 11. Gustaf Lundberg, Charlotta von Langenberg,

Mrs Arfwedson, 1772. Pastel, 65 �50 cm. Private

collection. Photo: Bukowskis.

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passive consumer, but as a reading, writing or

enacting co-participant � was essential. Swed-

ish women of the upper classes read and

wrote, visited art collections, attended theatre

and opera, and performed as amateur actors.

In her diaries from the 1770s, the Swedish

duchess Hedvig Elisabet Charlotta repeatedly

recorded plays and entertainments in which

courtiers appeared as Savoyard girls with

nyckelharpor (keyed fiddles) and marmots,

or as Savoyards with magic lanterns.2 2 Their

impressions and experiences are reflected in

the portraits made of them and in the fashion

they wore.

Lundberg thus took great pains to follow

the details of Bastienne’s costume in his

portrait of Charlotta von Langenberg � the

laced-up shepherdess’s bodice, the wide,

band-edged cuffs of the dark, simply cut

dress, and the crimped ribbons of the straw

hat, contrasting with the black bows from

which her cross is hung. The informed

observer would immediately have understood

the interplay between the real social role and

the fictive one, and appreciated the careful

aesthetic balance between the two. Yet the

subject of Lundberg’s portrait was not

primarily a fictional character, but a future

member of one of the most influential of

Stockholm’s wealthy merchant families.

Another factor behind the enduring po-

pularity of these portrait roles into the

1770s was the pastoral Alpine Romanticism

that followed in the wake of perhaps the

greatest best-selling novel of the eighteenth

century: Rousseau’s Julie ou la Nouvelle

Heloıse from 1761 . Between that year and

1800 , the book appeared in almost seventy

editions and a vast number of copies very

quickly found their way up to Scandinavia.2 3

Forming the backdrop to the novel’s love

drama between Julie and Saint-Preux is a

description of the valleys and villages of the

Alps, and nature is also what animates the

protagonists. The impact of this work on

the contemporary reading circles of the elite

was massive � in Sweden as elsewhere in

Europe.2 4 A documented example of the

reception of Rousseau in the North is the

young Swedish count and poet Johan Gab-

riel Oxenstierna’s diary entries from 1769 ,

which offer an emotional account of his

reading of Julie: »I read her with tenderness,

I shared in their destinies, which are there

described, and I wept floods of tears on

Julie’s death. I would be afraid to have to do

with anyone I saw reading this collection of

letters with indifference.«2 5 Similar reactions

can be observed in a number of other

Swedish diaries and letters at the time.2 6

Gustaf Lundberg, who had painted his

Fig. 12. Richard Purcell after Carle Vanloo, Madame

Favart. Mezzotint, 35.4 �24.9 cm. British Museum,

London. Photo: British Museum.

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portrait of Augusta Tornflycht en savoyarde

back in 1739 , could be quietly confident of

continuing success with a portrait role that

once again seemed well suited to the times.

The construction of femininity in portraits

at this time can be read as a surface of socially

coded signs � from the hairstyle and costume

to the pose of the body and the gesture of the

hand � signs fashioned with the perceptions

and expectations of the intended viewer in

mind. But just as, to Saint-Preux, Julie’s

physical beauty was but a reflection of that

of her spirit, so too, in the portraits of

Augusta Tornflycht, Ebba Bonde, Charlotta

von Langenberg or their aristocratic sisters of

Scandinavia, beauty was not primarily a

matter of their personal features, but of

highly valued qualities ascribed to »the

beautiful woman« as an idea.

According to the pastoral tradition, these

qualities existed in their most pristine form in

the uncorrupted rural population, and thus

found apt expression in the portrait role of

the beautiful and innocent shepherdess or

Savoyarde, hailing from an environment that

was perceived as singularly unexploited and

authentic. In Rousseau’s novel, Saint-Preux

roams the Alpine slopes and is enchanted by

both the landscape and its inhabitants, who

to his eyes seem free and happy. The women

he describes as modestly blushing and bux-

om, their beauty accentuated by their simple

but elegant dress. Inspired, he returns home

with a Valaisan Savoyard costume for his

beloved Julie.2 7

The last chapter of the Savoyard theme in

Sweden, or rather a related development of it,

saw a shift in focus from the Alpine valleys to

the folk culture of the North.2 8 During the

last decades of the eighteenth century, a

patriotic commitment to national subject

matter became more and more apparent in

Swedish cultural life. Benoit-Joseph Marsol-

lier des Viventieres’ divertissement Les deux

petits savoyards was performed at the Bollhus

Theatre in Stockholm in 1792 .2 9 When it

appeared in a Swedish translation two years

later, under the title Savoyargossarne, the

settings had a pronounced Swedish character,

with typical Scandinavian maypoles and a

Swedish-speaking ensemble.3 0 In the increas-

ingly intense search for a national identity

during the Gustavian era, a new interest in

Swedish folk culture � its history, costumes

and traditions � became evident in a number

of different fields.3 1 Images of Savoyards on

their Alpine slopes were replaced by pictures

of Swedish meadows populated by country

people dressed in their provincial costumes.

When the Favarts’ Annette et Lubin was staged

at a Gothenburg theatre in 1782 , the Alpine

lovers were transformed into a typical Swed-

Fig. 13. Nils Schillmark, Ulrika Charlotta Armfeldt,

1782. Oil on canvas, 92 �70 cm. Finnish National

Gallery, Ateneum, Helsinki. Photo: Central Art Archive,

H. Aaltonen.

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Fig. 14. Second row, first image: »Coeffure a la Saint Preux«; last row, third image: »Coeffure a la Nouvelle

Heloıse«, from Gallerie des Modes et Costumes Francais. 41e Cahier des Costumes Francais, 11e Suitte de

coeffures a la mode en 1783 , Paris, 1783. Private collection.

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ish farmhand and maid. However, in spite of

this development and the popularity of genre

images of Swedish folk costumes, the same

tendency did not extend into the Swedish

portraiture of the time. One exceptional

example, however, is Nils Schillmark’s por-

trait of Ulrika Charlotta Armfeldt from 1782

(Fig. 13).3 2 The young aristocratic girl is

dressed up in a kerchief and a striped apron,

like a Nordic farmer’s daughter, holding a

basket of wild strawberries in her hand. But

this rustic portrait was exceptional at the

time, and during the last part of the eight-

eenth century, the continental Savoyards, too,

disappeared from Swedish portraiture.

*

The Savoyard role � or dressing up in

Swedish folk costumes � involved a delicate

balancing act. In a portrait, a pastoral disguise

could express attractive virtues, but if the

resemblance to real-life country folk was taken

too far the costume became problematic.

Fashion plates of the Coeffure a la Nouvelle

Heloıse and the Coeffure a la Saint Preux showed

hairstyles which admittedly alluded to the

pastoral theme, but which in execution were

worlds apart from the unassuming simplicity

the novel’s hero dreamt of (Fig. 14). The choice

of the Savoyard theme � whether in portraiture

or in fashionable dress � also revealed social

ambitions of a far more urbane kind than the

rural models suggested.

Increasingly, the upper-class woman of eight-

eenth-century Sweden emerged as an active

consumer and as a bearer of culture, education,

judgement and refinement. The portrait roles

that have been described here were clear

manifestations of this consumer culture.

The role of the simple Savoyarde ultimately

became a demonstration of the good taste of

the sitter and her informed participation in

the aristocratic culture of the day � in which

literature, theatre, portraiture, prints and

dress fashion were combined a la mode.

Translated by Martin Naylor

Endnotes1 . Edgar Munhall, »Savoyards in French eighteenth-century

art«, Apollo, vol. 87 , 72 , 1968 , pp. 86 �94 .

2 . John Hibberd, Salomon Gessner: His Creative

Achievement and Influence, Cambridge, 1976 , pp. 37 ff.

See also the preface to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Julie eller

den nya Heloıse (Julie ou la nouvelle Heloıse, 1761),

Malmo, 1983 , pp. 44 �51 ; and Martin Lamm,

Upplysningstidens romantik. Den mystiskt sentimentala

stromningen i svensk litteratur, I, (1918) 1963 , pp. 471 �479 .

3 . See for example Jacques F. Beauvarlet’s print after

Etienne Jeaurat, Les Savoyardes, 1756 , 37 .2 �26 .6 cm,

Nationalmuseum, Stockholm; and Giovanni Volpato’s

print after Francesco Maggiotto, Savoiardi colla Lanterna

Magica, c. 1765 , 36 .6 �28 .5 cm, British Museum,

London.

4 . Claude-Louis Desrais, Petits metiers et cris de Paris, c.

1770 . Pen-and-wash drawing, 34 �22 .5 cm. Source:

gallica.bnf.fr/Bibliotheque Nationale de France.

5 . This engraving by Gillberg was in fact made in France.

Nevertheless, his images spread widely in Sweden.

6 . See Melissa Hyde, Women, Art and the Politics of Identity

in Eighteenth-Century Europe, Aldershot, 2003 , and

Melissa Hyde, Making Up the Rococo: Francois Boucher

and His Critics, Los Angeles, 2006 ; Mary D. Sheriff,

Moved by Love: Inspired Artists and Deviant Women in

Eighteenth-Century France, Chicago, 2004 ; Kathleen

Nicholson, »The ideology of feminine ‘virtue’. The vestal

virgin in French eighteenth-century allegorical

portraiture«, in Joanna Woodall (ed.), Portraiture: Facing

the Subject, Manchester, 1997 , pp. 52 �72 ; Sabrina

Norlander Eliasson, Portraiture and Social Identity in

Eighteenth Century Rome, Manchester, 2009 .

7 . The article takes as its starting point a chapter of my

PhD thesis: Carolina Brown, »Det pastorala temat i

1700-talets portrattkonst«, Liksom en herdinna. Litterara

teman i svenska kvinnoportratt under 1700-talet,

Stockholm, 2012 (diss.), pp. 181 �259 ; and also:

Carolina Brown, »Portratt en savoyarde«, in Merit Laine

& Carolina Brown, Gustaf Lundberg 1695 �1786 . En

portrattmalare och hans tid, Stockholm, 2006 , pp. 150 �165 . For a more detailed discussion of the themes

considered here, readers are referred to these two works.

8 . See John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination:

English Culture in the Eighteenth Century, Chicago,

2000 ; Michael North, Material Delight and the Joy of

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Living: Cultural Consumption in the Age of Enlightenment

in Germany (2003), Aldershot, 2008 .

9 . See Michael L. Wilson, »Visual Culture: A Useful

Category of Historical Anaslysis?«, in Vanessa R.

Schwartz & Jeannene M. Przyblyski, (eds.), The

Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture Reader, New York,

2004 , pp. 26 �34 , and Sunil Manghani, Jon Simons &

Arthur Piper, (eds.), Images. A Reader, London, 2006 .

10 . See Mary D. Sheriff, »How images got their gender:

Masculinity and femininity in the visual arts«, in Teresa

A. Meade & Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, (eds.), A

Companion To Gender History, Malden, 2006 ; Melissa

Hyde, »Troubling identities and the agreeable game of

art: From Madame de Pompadour’s theatrical ‘Breeches’

of decorum to Drouais’ Portrait of Madame Du Barry en

Homme«, in Andrea Pearson, (ed.), Women and Portraits

in Early Modern Europe: Gender, Agency, Identity,

Aldershot, 2008 .

11 . Hedvig Elisabeth Charlottas dagbok, I�II, ed. Carl Carlson

Bonde, Stockholm, 1902 , pp. 32 , 34 ff. and 442 f.

12 . See Brown 2006 .

13 . Fredrik Sander, Nationalmuseum. Bidrag till taflegalleriets

historia. I, Riksradet grefve Carl Gustaf Tessins, Konung

Adolf Fredriks och Drottning Lovisa Ulrikas taflesamlingar

(1872), Stockholm, 1878 , p. 55 , my transl.

14 . Merit Laine, »Skonhetsgalleriet pa Drottningholm«, in

Laine & Brown 2006 , pp. 182 ff.

15 . Sander 1878, p. 117 , and Alexis Piron, Oeuvres

Complettes d’Alexis Piron, VII, Paris, 1776 , p. 131 .

16 . Margaret Morgan Grasselli & Pierre Rosenberg, (eds.),

Watteau, Berlin, 1985 , p. 320 .

17 . Jacques Charlier, Unknown Woman. Gouache, 5 .8 �7 .6

cm. Musee du Louvre, Paris, RF 152.

18 . The dress fashion of these portraits also reflected that of

real life and its adaptation to the different female roles of

the time. Madame de Genlis, in her memoirs from her

youth in the 1750s, describes preparations for a summer

visit to the country at Etiolles, the home of Charles-

Guillaume Lenormant d’Etiolles, former husband of the

marquise de Pompadour. (See Stephanie Felicite Genlis,

Memoires Inedits de Madame la Comtesse De Genlis, Sur

le dix-huitieme siecle et la Revolution Francaise, depuis

1756 jusqu’a nos jours, I, Brussels, 1825 , pp. 15 f.) Formal

court attire was discarded and a costume of a rural

Savoyard type assumed, but this was a symbolic act,

involving no lowering of the exclusive standards of

fashion. The brown skirt may have been shorter to

resemble the costume of the lower ranks, with a

headscarf tied under the chin as the accompanying

coiffure, but the studied »simplicity« of the outfit was

nonetheless crafted from fashionable silk taffeta: »J’avais

quitte mon panier en arrivant a Etioles, pour prendre ce

qu’on appelait un habit de marmotte ou de Savoyarde:

c’etait un petit juste de taffetas brun avec un jupon court

de la meme etoffe, garni de deux ou trois rangs de rubans

couleur de rose, cousus a plat, et pour coiffure un fichu

de gaze noue sous le menton.« (Ibid., pp. 15 f.)

19 . Rousseau (1761) 1983 , p. 13 .

20 . Agne Beijer, Les troupes francaises a Stockholm, 1699 �1792 . Listes de repertoire, ed. Sven Bjorkman, Uppsala,

1989 , p. 221 .

21 . Margareta Bjorkman, Lasarnas noje. Kommersiella

lanbibliotek i Stockholm 1783 �1809 , Uppsala, 1992

(diss.), p. 228 .

22 . See note 11 .

23 . The novel was first published with the title Lettres de

deux amans, habitans d’une petite ville au pied des

Alpes . . . (»Letters of two lovers living in a small town at

the foot of the Alps...«); see Rousseau (1761) 1983 , p. 21 .

Regarding the huge impact and reception of Rousseau in

Sweden, see Fredrik Book, Romanens och

prosaberattelsens historia i Sverige intill 1809 , Stockholm,

1907 .

24 . See Robert Darnton, »Readers Respond to Rousseau:

The Fabrication of Romantic Sensitivity«, The Great Cat

Massacre And Other Episodes in French Cultural History,

New York, 1984 , pp. 215 �256 . Regarding Sweden, see

Book 1907 .

25 . Johan Gabriel Oxenstierna, Dagboksanteckningar aren

1769 �1771 , I, ed. Gustaf Stjernstrom, Uppsala, 1881 ,

p. 53 , my transl.

26 . See Book 1907 and Rousseau (1761) 1983 , pp. 26 f. Cf.

also Lamm (1918) 1963 , pp. 472 ff. Lamm also

describes how in Sweden people looked for a Swedish

counterpart to the idealised Alpine landscape in the

mountains of Lapland (p. 476).

27 . Ibid., pp. 47 ff.

28 . See Brown 2012 , p. 252 ff.

29 . Carl Envalsson, Savoyargossarne. Skadespel med sang uti

en act, Stockholm, 1794 .

30 . Ibid.

31 . Pehr Hillestrom, Costumes des paysans de divers cantons

en Suede. Graves, dapres les tableaux de m:r P. Hillestrom,

par J.F. Martin, demeuraut [. . .] dans la Regeringsgata, la

maison n:o 74 , Stockholm, 1805 . See also Marie-

Christine Skuncke & Anna Ivarsdotter, Svenska operans

fodelse. Studier i gustaviansk musikdramatik, Stockholm,

1998 , pp. 299 , 311 and 314 .

32 . Nils Schillmark was active in Finland, then part of the

Swedish kingdom. The model’s family the Armfeldts also

derived from this province.

Summary

Why would a Swedish Countess wish to be

portrayed in the guise of a shepherdess from

the Savoy Alps? During the eighteenth cen-

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tury, portraits en savoyarde became popular

throughout Europe. This essay deals with the

interplay between different medias and cul-

tural expressions that can be traced behind

this particular portrait category. Taking its

starting-point in portraits by the Swedish

artist Gustaf Lundberg, it focus on the role

contemporary literature, drama, fashion and

fashion prints had in promoting the renewal

and differentiation of eighteenth-century pas-

toral portraits of women.

Portraits in which the upper-class women

assumed the role of a shepherdess or Sa-

voyarde articulated an endeavour to identify

with the heroines of literary fiction and the

ideals with which they were associated. The

conscious role play of such images defined the

sitter both as an informed, contemporary

consumer of culture and as a figure linked to

the boundless realm of fiction.

The female portraits are studied here, not

only in relation to novels and dramatic art,

but also in the light of reproduced engravings

and fashion images. It is thus in the context of

this melting pot of new literary influences and

visual cultures, characteristic of the thriving

consumption culture and fashion of the

eighteenth century, that the portraits of

Savoyardes and shepherdesses of the Alps

must be understood.

Carolina Brown is a senior lecturer in art

history at Uppsala University. She has con-

tributed to a series of books on the subject of

eighteenth-century art and cultural history.

Her PhD thesis Liksom en herdinna. Litterara

teman i svenska kvinnoportratt under 1700-

talet (»‘As Festive a Comely Shepherdess . . .’

Literary Themes in Swedish Female Portraits

of the Eighteenth Century«) was published in

2012 .

Dr Carolina Brown

University of Uppsala

Art History, Box 630

751 26 Uppsala

Sweden

carolina.ahlund-brown@hgo.se

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