Snuff Box (Tabatière) with Portrait of Marie Antoinette (1768): Art, History and Details

Snuff Box (Tabatière) with Portrait of Marie Antoinette (1768) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Pierre-François-Mathis de Beaulieu (French); François Dumont (French, 1751–1831).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This box was created through the collaboration of two skilled and well-known artisans of the period, master goldsmith Pierre-François-Mathis de Beaulieu and celebrated miniature painter François Dumont. The portrait of Marie Antoinette on the box's lid is painted in Dumont’s own style while those on the sides and bottom of the box take inspiration from the work of painter François Boucher, known for his pastoral scenes in the Rococo style.

Object facts

• Title: Snuff Box (Tabatière) with Portrait of Marie Antoinette
• Date: 1768
• Creator attribution: Pierre-François-Mathis de Beaulieu (French); François Dumont (French, 1751–1831)
• Culture: France
• Type: Enamel
• Technique: watercolor on ivory in a gold and enamel box
• Dimensions: Image: 3.4 x 2.9 cm (1 5/16 x 1 1/8 in.); Overall: 3.9 x 6 cm (1 9/16 x 2 3/8 in.)
• Collection: Decorative Arts
• Department: Decorative Art and Design
• Accession number: 1957.408

A detail from the museum

Marie Antoinette, queen consort of French King Louis XVI and great patron of the decorative arts, was executed in 1793 at the end of the French Revolution.

Collection credit

Gift of Mrs. Edward B. Greene

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.