A seated woman with a generous dcollet, her arms folded on her lap, looking to the right

One of two drawings from the collection with an English provenance (see also the following lot). This sheet, executed mostly in black lead, is related to a figure in Les Bergers now in Berlin. Another drawing related to the same picture and drawn in the same technique was formerly in the Heim collection and was recently sold in Paris, Drouot 27 November 1998, lot 16 (FF1,800,000). The reference to Rubens is clear: the dress is expansive, the dcollet ample, and can be connected to the famous series of Kermesses. In the picture in Berlin, the figure is seated next to a man playing the bagpipes which has tentatively been identified as the Abb Haranger.
Margaret Morgan Grasselli and Marianne Roland Michel date these drawings to the years 1717-18 while Louis-Antoine Prat and Pierre Rosenberg put them a year earlier.