Lady in White Dress

The vivid portrait of a lady in a white gown is dominated by plain immediacy and thus corresponds to the classicist ideal of the time. The principle stating that the smaller the portrait, the less individual the representation does not seem apply to Augustin. Even when working in miniature format he achieved a vivid reproduction of the shades and nuances of his sitters' faces. His precise work is so fine that it cannot be perceived with the naked eye, but only with a magnifying glass.¹ As it seems simply impossible to paint so delicately with brush and paint, Augustin's miniatures radiate something which, in the words of a contemporary, "drive the observer to despair".²
B. P.