Hélène FEILLET (1811-1889) Portrait of Jacques-Taurin de Lormand at age 78 Oil on canvas signed in red lower left in the upright of the Empire armchair. Size: 102 x 82 cm Etienne Lormand, born in Bayonne in 1701 to a modest family, rose to prominence through trading, acquiring the seigneury of Ognoas in 1770. Jacques-Taurin, the family's youngest son, was born on September 5, 1762. He was admitted to the Paris bar, then to the Parliament of Navarre. On March 27, 1782, at the age of 20, he was admitted with age exemption to the office of "conseiller en la cour de parlement, comptes, aides et finances de Navarre" in Pau. After the Revolution and the Empire, he was elected deputy for Basses-Pyrénées. After retiring from politics, he became administrator of the Saint-Léon hospital in Bayonne. Jacques-Taurin died in his native Bayonne on January 24, 1847, aged 85. With no heirs, he bequeathed 4 million of his 5 million gold francs to various religious and philanthropic institutions. It is likely that the artist Feillet represented the notable man when he drew up his bequest. Hélène Feillet trained as a painter with Ary Scheffer and her father Pierre-Jacques Feillet, a painter and lithographer who himself had been trained by the famous painter Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson (1767-1824). She exhibited at the Salon from 1836, and in London from 1855. Her "Arrival in Bayonne of the Duke and Duchess of Orleans", painted in 1842, was commissioned by the Ministry of the Interior. An accomplished painter, she embodied the pictorial savoir-faire of her time in Bayonne.