Portrait of a Lady, bust length, wearing a white dress and a red cape and holding a posy of flowers before a landscape

Although the identity of the sitter is still unknown, the present work can be dated to the second decade of the nineteenth century both on stylistic grounds (compare with the Portrait of Caroline Murat, Queen of Naples with her children, in the Musée Malmaison), and by studying the sitter's dress and her parure. It can thus be placed in the last period of the Empire or just at the beginning of the Restoration, hence around 1810-20. It was at this time that the jeweler Mellerio, located in the Place Vendôme in Paris, was producing necklaces of the type seen in the present painting, often made of drops of pink coral, for the Imperial Court. Gérard, who has deliberately changed the type of stone from that of the original necklace for aesthetic reasons, and doubtless also to please his sitter, shows himself in this work to be a very subtle and sophisticated colorist, confident in his rendering of the beauty of the young woman and her delightful pearly complexion. The little bouquet of flowers, which attests to, amongst other things, Gérard's own interest in flowers, also reflects a passion which grew during his friendship with the Spaendonck brothers at the time of the Directoire. A similar bouquet is depicted in the Portrait of Constance Lubienska painted around 1813 (sold at Christie's, London, April 21, 1989, lot 70 (£130,000=$221,000); and see the catalogue of the exhibition French Art during the Revolution, Colnaghi, New York, 1989; p. 230, no. 33, p. 229, illustrated) in which the flowers are inserted in the sitter's hair.

Appointed by Napoleon Buonaparte in 1800 to undertake official portraits and subsequently championed by his court, Gérard was created Premier Peintre to the Empress Josephine in 1806 and Premier Peintre du Roi in 1817, receiving other titles and honors prior to his appointment as Baron in 1819. The present work dates, therefore, from the height of his career, demonstrating his versitility and revealing him as a painter with a pre-Romantic sensibility.

This work will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné being prepared by Alain Latreille and the Wildenstein Institute on Baron Gérard.