Portrait of a young artist

Very little is known about Catherine Lusurier, who lived to be just 28 years old. She was the niece of Hubert Drouais (1699-1767), under whom she was apprenticed until his death. In his workshop she likely would have worked closely with Drouais’ son, Francois-Hubert Drouais (1727-1775), a leading portraitist of the time. The Drouais's stylistic influences are clearly seen in the present painting as well as her other works, primarily depicting portraits of children and artists. Although only a few signed paintings by Lusurier have survived – most notably the Portrait of Jean-Germain Drouais, the son of Francois-Hubert, now in the Musée du Louvre, Paris (fig. 1.; inv. no. 6406) – scholars such as Helen Ashmore have used these to reconstruct her small corpus of works (see H. Ashmore, 'Catherine Lusurier (1752-81): A woman painter in eighteenth-century Paris', Apollo, May 2001, pp. 34-40).