Lady with a Veil

This half-length portrait – an unusual format in miniature portrait painting – shows a young lady in a pale violet and white checked dress in a park landscape. Her gossamer-thin veil, draped playfully over her hair and shoulders and billowing in the wind, distinctly evokes works by Aubry’s mentor, Jean-Baptiste Isabey. After being honed to perfection by Aubry’s teacher, this pose enjoyed great popularity for a time. In this portrait, however, it creates a slightly stiff effect: the reserved posture of the sitter is not consistent with the liveliness and movement of the veil motif. Nevertheless, Aubry’s enormous painting skill is in evidence, for example in the rendering of the transparent veil and the fine modelling of the pale skin tones with blueish shadows. According to an erroneous inscription on the reverse, the sitter is Marie-Rose Maistre (1794–1857), student and later wife of Aubry’s teacher, Isabey. Although Aubry quite possibly knew this woman and painted her portrait, the very even facial features of the sitter strongly suggest that the likeness was painted from the imagination.¹