Guillaume Lethière, Death of Virginia, c. 1823-28, oil on paper, mounted on canvas. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 2023.7

In 1819, Lethière entered into a legal dispute with a supposed distant cousin who claimed to be the lawful heir of his father Pierre Guillon’s estate. The press surrounding the trial widely circulated details about Lethière’s mother, his race, and the circumstances of his birth, as well as the contemporary French perception of what one journalist called his “naïve and modest genealogy.” The court ultimately ruled in Lethière’s favor, defending his right to his father’s inheritance and the Guillon name.

After the challenges of the trial and during the final part of his career, Lethière continued to receive important state commissions and to exhibit frequently at the Paris Salon in the genres of landscape, historical landscape, and Troubadour painting (idealized medieval and Renaissance scenes). He also returned to the classical subject of Death of Virginia begun decades before, finishing his large-scale version of the painting and exhibiting it in London in 1828 and then at the Paris Salon in 1831, his final Salon submission. 

Following the artist’s death on April 21, 1832, François Debret, president of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, and Alexandre Dumas, the celebrated writer and son of his dear friend General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, delivered the eulogies at his funeral.