A Lady, said to be Madame Danloux, nursing her Child in a Drawing Room

The 1920 Paris exhibition catalogue is the first to describe this picture as a 'Portrait de Madame Danloux de passage à Rome', referring to the wife of the portrait painter Henri-Pierre Danloux (1753-1809), who gave birth to a child in Rome in 1788. The identification of the sitter as Madame Danloux seems to be based on the fact that both Henri-Pierre and his wife knew Ménageot well and that the picture apparently bore the date 1788 (when it was in the Paris exhibition), the year of the birth of the Danloux's child in Rome. However, this date is no longer visible on the picture and, as Willk-Brocard points out (loc. cit.), both the costume of the sitter, which would be typical of the period 1783-86, and the fact that the room depicted is furnished in a French style, would suggest that the picture was painted in France before the artist's departure to Rome, and would therefore make the sitter's identification doubtful.

Whatever the exact subject is, as Willk-Brocard says, the picture 'prouve combien le peintre excellait dans ces scènes de genre de petit format à la facture lisse et porcelainée inspirée des écoles du Nord, si chères aux collectionneurs français.'