Lady in Light Blue Dress

An artist from Antoine Vestier’s circle painted this atmospheric lady’s portrait. It stands out on the one hand due to its colour harmony, the luminous light blue, grey and pink combined next to each other, and on the other hand due to the model’s reflective yet serene expression. The miniaturist did not paint a rigid doll’s face, but knew how to make the sitter appear expressive. He applied the colours with an apparent lightness, combining opaque and transparent layers of colour. This liberal painting style did not prevent him from observing even the most delicate nuances. Thus he painted the tender greenish half-shades in her face and the shades of the lace just a touch darker than the background bordering on the right, thereby vividly enhancing the lady’s bust against the grey ground. The apparently easy and nonchalant painting style goes back to the Swedish artist Peter Adolf Hall, who left a major impact on miniature painting after his arrival in Paris in 1766 (see the essay by Bernd Pappe in Pappe/Schmieglitz-Otten 2012, pp. 71–91).

Judging by the hairstyle – the powdered hair piled high with tight rolls of curls at the temples – the work was created around 1775. The lady wears no other ornament apart from a narrow, close-fitting black ribbon around her neck. A pendant was probably fastened to the part in front dropping to her cleavage, which in this instance, however, was covered by the lace.

B. P.