The present bust is of Marguerite Le Comte, the wife of a Paris lawyer, who was born in 1719 and who died at the end of the eighteenth century. Madame Le Comte was distinguished for her fine taste in the arts and was herself an engraver of some talent. As well as being one of Coustou's subjects, her portrait was also executed by Pajou in 1781, and in the mid-1750s by the painters Maurice Quentin de la Tour and Claude-Henri Watelet (d.1786), her devoted companion for more than thirty years.
Guillaume Coustou II (1716-1777) was the son of Guillaume the Elder, and the nephew of Nicolas Coustou. He studied in Rome from 1735 to 1740, before returning to a successful career in Paris. His depiction of Mme. Le Comte, with her flower-adorned hair and her slender, twisting neck manages to evoke both the gaiety and the grace which is typical of mid-18th century France.