Girl with Flower Basket

Although unsigned, this extremely tender portrait of a girl can be attributed to Louis-Lié Périn due to its painting technique. He was one of the most talented Parisian miniaturists of his time. His“stain-technique” inspired by Hall, with which he rendered background and garments, is an unmistakeable trade mark of the artist.¹ Périn’s works during the ancien régime are scarce, yet he was already highly esteemed at that time and had obtained important commissions.

The artist portrayed a roughly ten-year-old girl picking roses in a park with a small basket on her arm. In the background, a semicircular balustrade sloping to the front and interrupted by a flight of stairs implies a bosquet, which visually surrounds the model.² To emphasise the childlike stature of the sitter, the painter made use of a trick: he placed her decidedly deeper into the picture than his grown-up models, so that her head protrudes only slightly from the middle of the picture, and the background beyond takes up a comparatively large space.

According to the inscription on the reverse, the sitter is Mlle Thiroux de Mauregard, who later married the Marquis de Pracomtal. However this must be a mistake, because Anne-Charlotte Thiroux de Mauregard (1736–1803) married the Marquis Arnoul de Pracomtal as early as in 1754 and would have been about fifty years old in the miniature.

B. P.