Lot Essay
Moreau executed several drawings of his two daughters. The first, Catherine-Françoise, was born in 1770 and later married the painter Carle Vernet; the second, however, died young. A large chalk drawing of Françoise, aged two, is in the British Museum, formerly in the Mühlbacher Collection, Paris, 16 May 1899, lot 205, illustrated. Further portraits of the same child, in pen and brown ink, brown wash, are in the Fondation Custodia, Paris, and in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, formerly in the Goncourt collection, E. Launay, Les frêres Goncourt collectionneurs de dessins, Paris, 1991, nos. 207-8, illustrated.