Jérôme Langlois

Lady with Miniature

The lady is shown with a case which probably contains the portrait of the person to whom she wanted to respond with this portrait of herself. She is seated in a chair in the style of Louis XVI which Langlois had in his studio and which is found in several of his miniatures ¹ . Usually he placed the chair in a slanted position and painted the sitter with his/her face turned towards the observer. Mostly he chose a grey surface as background which he partly lightened to increase the sitter' s vividness. Langlois' representations correspond to the ideas of the revolution: they naturally show the sitters in front of a neutral background, thus giving an authentic but also slightly austere impression.

B.P.

¹ Cf. two other portraits of ladies painted in the early 1790s; sold at Christie's Geneva, May 16-17, 1995, no. 162 and at Christie's London, October 21, 1997, no. 47.