A Woman with a Blue Mantle
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Oil painting of a portrait of an unknown woman wearing a white dress and blue mantle. The woman is shown just over half-length, her body turning just slightly to the left, and her face straight on, looking out at the viewer. She wears her powdered hair up, trimmed with a rose and flower. She wears a loose white silk dress with an oval neckline and a flowing blue cloak over her left shoulder and round her right arm. Her right arm may have originally been holding something beyond the current picture frame. Vegetation appears in the left background, otherwise the background is grey.
Luminous against a grey ground, this unknown lady demonstrates a pose used repeatedly by the successful portrait painter, Jean-Marc Nattier. The half-length pose, with hands extended beyond the frame, and a composition based on a triangle of drapery, features in dozens of female portraits painted by Nattier. In 1763, such repetition caused Denis Diderot to unkindly comment that the old and rambling Nattier believes he still sees the same figure as all his portraits look the same.
Several portraits of unknown sitters made in the 1730s and 40s feature this pose. Nattier also used the composition for his portraits of Marie-Françoise de la Cropte de Saint-Abre, Marquise d'Argence (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, acc. no. 58.102.1); Madame Roland de la Porte painted in 1754 (Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, acc. no. 119.1992); and Marie-Charlotte de Châteaurenaud, Marquise de Belestat, painted in 1755 (Wallace Collection, London, acc. no. P461). Nattier varied the dress and background of his sitters. Some are more formal whilst others evoke classical dress and landscape, as in the Waddesdon portrait.
Nattier came from a family of artists. He trained as a history painter and was received into the Académie Royale with this title, but he chose to specialise in the more lowly, but more lucrative, genre of portraiture. Remaining in Paris for much of his life, he built up a profitable business painting fashionable portraits that often drew on mythological or allegorical themes. From 1732 he became successful at court, particularly with his paintings of noblewomen. He showed many portraits at the Salon exhibitions of the Académie, but this work did not feature amongst them.
Phillippa Plock, 2012
Dimensions (mm) / weight (mg)
790 x 630 (sight size)
Signature & date
signed and dated, centre left: Nattier / 1742
Provenance
- Acquired by Baron Edmond de Rothschild (b.1845, d.1934); by descent to his son James de Rothschild (b.1878, d.1957); inherited by his wife Dorothy de Rothschild (b.1895, d.1988); then to a Rothschild Family Trust.
Collection
- Waddesdon (Rothschild Family)
- On loan since 1998
Bibliography
- Xavier Salmon; Jean-Marc Nattier, 1685-1766; Musée national des châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon, 26 octobre 1999-30 janvier 2000; Paris; Réunion des musées nationaux; 1999; p. 262, fig. 2
Subject person
- Unknown, Sitter
Person as Subject
Subjects
- Figures/Female
- Portraits/Female
- Work & Occupations/Social Rank/Nobility
- Nature, Landscape & The Elements/Flowers