The artist's second wife Marie-Victoire Jaquotot, holding black and white drawings from an open portfolio before her

Marie Victoire Jaquotot (1772-1855) was the second of the three wifes of Etienne Charles Le Guay. Of almost legendary beauty but despotic and presumptuous, she turned Le Guay's life into hell. She finally divorced him in 1810, seven years after having given birth to her only son, Philippe, the fruit of her passionate but ephemerous affair with the innocent 21-years young architect Jean Comairas, who was then over ten years her junior. She finally married an obscure stock holder, J. Pinet. Extremely successful as a miniaturist on both ivory and porcelain, she was favoured by both King Louis XVIII and King Charles X who appointed her Peintre du cabinet and subsequently Premier peintre sur porcelaine, du Roi et de la Manufacture de Sèvres. In 1830, she fell from grace; even her privilege to help herself in the Louvre and borrow original paintings, often for years, in order to copy them in her studio, was withdrawn.
A signed version is in the Louvre, illustrated in P. Jean-Richard, Miniatures sur ivoire. Musée du Louvre. Musée d'Orsay, Paris, 1994, no. 419, pp. 231-232, and in R. Rückert, 'Marie-Victoire Jaquotot (1772-1855)', Weltkunst, 15, 1 August 1985, p. 2104, fig. 5.