French 18th century portrait of a noblewoman

This beautiful young woman is portrayed in a bust, leaning against a stone entablature, she is dressed in a yellow satin dress with embroidery embroidered with silver thread, which reveals the lace of her blouse worn under the dress. A large piece of blue silk envelops it in a great movement creating crumpled draperies with sharp angles. The young model with powdered and tied hair whose locks escape on her back, carries in her hair a delicate flowery composition that constitutes her unique ornament. Her forearm, emerging from the lively drapes of her cloak, adorned with white lace from her blouse, is elegantly set on a crimson velvet cushion with a pompom. The hand with fine fingers whose index finger is detached in a desired gesture and the right head of our model give a refinement and elegance to his posture. The painter demonstrates a powerful skill in creating a vibrant contrast between shadow and dazzling light, as well as in the arrangement of drapes animated by raw reflections and in the execution of many folds in fabrics. Thanks to the talent of our artist the portrait of this young woman is destined to subjugate by its beauty and its brightness the spectator. In addition to the quality of execution and mastery, our painting has its important frame of origin very elaborate, gilded wood and finely carved with flowers, windings, foliage, it brings an additional magnificence to the portrait.
Dimensions: framed: h. 100 cm, l. 84 cm, canvas: h. 79 cm, 63 cm.
Period first half of the 18th century


The elegant and flattering manner of execution, the presence of the melted and faded keys, the care taken in the rendering of the fabrics and the softness of the expression of the model remind us of an artist of the entourage of Jean Marc Nattier, one of the greatest French portraitists of the 18th century.

Jean Marc Nattier (1685-1766) Son of the portraitist Marc Nattier who will be his first teacher, Jean-Marc Nattier enters the school of the Royal Academy, and becomes the pupil of his godfather Jean Jouvenet. He left for Holland in 1717 where he worked for Peter the Great and realized the portrait of the Tsar, the Empress, several personalities of the Russian court and The Battle of Poltava (Moscow, Pushkin Museum). Back in France, a year later he is received as a painter of history on presentation of Perseus assisted by Minerva, Petrified Phinée .... Nattier quickly abandons history painting to devote himself to the art of portraiture. He became the privileged portraitist of the royal family and the court, his allegorical or mythological portraits will be a resounding success, Madame Henriette under the figure of Flore, 1742 (Versailles, national museum of the castle and Trianon), Madame Adelaide under the figure of Diana, 1745 (Niort, museum of the fine arts), Michel-Ferdinand of Albert d'Ailly, duke of Chaulnes represented in Hercules, 1746 (Paris, museum of the Louvre) .... His abundant work is regularly presented at the Salon from 1737 to 1763. The critics were laudatory, but later, the artist will face acid judgments including from Diderot. Although he has sometimes been accused of having "painted with makeup," today he is known to have excelled in the genre of portraiture. His inventive and personal work, executed in a palette of rare and subtle delicacy, is essential because it is one of the most vivacious testimonies of the court of Louis XV.