Alexander Kucharsky

Alexander Kucharsky (Warsaw, 1741 - Paris, 1819) was a Polish portrait painter who spent most of his adult life in France. He is best known for his portraits of the French royal family during the Revolution, especially Marie Antoinette and the young Louis XVII.

As a boy he served as a page to Stanisław II Augustus, the last ruler of an independent Poland. He first trained in Warsaw in the studio of Marcello Bacciarelli and then, with a bursary from the king, went to Paris, where from 1760 to 1769 he worked under Joseph-Marie Vien and Carle van Loo at the Académie Royale.

The Polish king had hoped he would become a history painter, but Kucharsky turned to portraiture, which cost him the royal patronage. He worked in pastel, oil, gouache and occasionally miniature, usually producing half-length figures. His clients were mostly French and Polish nobles, and from 1776 to 1778 he was in the service of the Princes de Condé.

When Marie Antoinette lost her court painter after Vigée-Le Brun left in 1789, Kucharsky became her official portraitist. He also painted the Princesse de Lamballe, the comte d'Artois and Catherine the Great of Russia. His portraits of the queen show the premature aging she suffered in the years before her execution.

His loyalty to the royalist cause earned him a pension from Louis XVIII, which he received until his death. Today he is remembered mainly as a portraitist of the last generation of the Versailles court.