Antoine de Favray

The recorded working language is French. Works named in the authority record are Portrait of David George van Lennep, Chief Merchant of the Dutch Factory at Smyrna (Izmir) and his Wife and Children. Work by Antoine de Favray is recorded in the collections of Musée des Beaux-Arts de la ville de Paris, Rijksmuseum, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Pera Museum and Maritime Museum.

• Name — Antoine de Favray • Born — 8 September 1706 • Birthplace — Bagnolet, France • Died — 9 February 1798 • Place of death — Malta • Movement — Orientalist

In 1762, Antoine de Favray moved to Constantinople, where he spent nine years. He painted numerous genre scenes of the everyday life in Turkey under Louis XVI, and he also depicted locals and foreign dignitaries. Especially notable are a portrait of French ambassador Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes (1717-1787), who was living in Constantinople between 1754 and 1768, and a portrait of Gravier's wife Annette Duvivier de Testa (1730-1798). She had previously been married to Testa, a merchand and member of a prominent Genoese family who settled in Pera for several centuries. Favray portrayed both the ambassador and his wife in rich Turkish dress.

• Illustration — French ambassador Charles Gravier de Vergennes in Ottoman dress, painted by Antoine de Favray, 1766, Pera Museum, Istanbul. • Illustration — The Mirabita Sisters, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston • Illustration — Antoine de Favray - Portrait of the Countess of Vergennes in Turkish Attire, Pera Museum, Istanbul • Illustration — Audience of Charles de Vergennes with Sultan Osman III in 1755. • Illustration — Grand Master Philippe Villiers de l'Isle Adam Taking Possession of Mdina • Illustration — Antoine de Favray - The Visit of Maltese Ladies • Illustration — St Ignatius of Loyola writing ‘The Spiritual Exercises’ during his time of discernment in Manresa, under the maternal gaze of the Virgin Mary and her son Jesus by Antoine Favray (1748)