Portrait of a woman, bust-length, possibly Marguerite Gérard

All that is known of François Barry is the entry in the livret for the Salon de 1796, where he is described as 'élève de l'Académie de Saint-Luc, à Rome, rue Ménilmontant, no. 3'. He showed four portraits, presumably in oil: a man beside a lake; a child as Bacchus, and a self-portrait, made in Rome in 1788, with a pendant of an unnamed woman. The present drawing also from 1796 is the only example known (previously attributed to the miniaturist John Barry). The sitter is depicted in a trompe l'oeil oval mount, inscribed with a daisy and the letter G, possibly indicating that the sitter is the painter Marguerite Gérard, as there are strong similarities with the portraits of her by Fragonard and Dumont.

We are grateful to Neil Jeffares for his help in preparing this catalogue entry.