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拍品專文
Edgar Munhall, who has examined this panel recently, dates it to around 1800, judging it to have been painted by Greuze when 'the artist was in his mid-seventies, having survived the Revolution with all its vicissitudes, a divorce that ruined him, and a precarious professional situation of some duration. Still, he was able to conjure up this subtly titillating image, with its special complexity (the illusion of the arm raised before the face), presented in an elaborate, almost Cubist design within an unusual oval format. His particular painterly skills are still on display in the feathery hair, the moist eye, the slightly quivering flesh, and the overall, subtle coloristic harmony'.
Munhall notes that a number of similar pictures by Greuze from this same period survive, notably La Surprise at the Musée Condé, Chantilly (whose history has sometimes been confused with the present painting); the Girl Leaning on her hand in the Wallace Collection, London; and the various versions of The Letter Writer in the Wallace Collection and elsewhere. As Munhall observes, 'it was the presence of one of these as no. 170 in the Salon of 1800, Une jeune femme se disposant a ecrire une lettre d'amour, that provided a reasonable date for the other related pictures. Besides sharing the same elaborate coiffure with pearls entwined in the hair, the subjects are of a similar physical type, with the peculiarly flattened oval head, almost a mushroom, that the artist favored at this time'.
We are grateful to Edgar Munhall for confirming the attribution of this painting and for his assistance with the catalogue entry.(written commmunication, 3 August 2006).
Munhall notes that a number of similar pictures by Greuze from this same period survive, notably La Surprise at the Musée Condé, Chantilly (whose history has sometimes been confused with the present painting); the Girl Leaning on her hand in the Wallace Collection, London; and the various versions of The Letter Writer in the Wallace Collection and elsewhere. As Munhall observes, 'it was the presence of one of these as no. 170 in the Salon of 1800, Une jeune femme se disposant a ecrire une lettre d'amour, that provided a reasonable date for the other related pictures. Besides sharing the same elaborate coiffure with pearls entwined in the hair, the subjects are of a similar physical type, with the peculiarly flattened oval head, almost a mushroom, that the artist favored at this time'.
We are grateful to Edgar Munhall for confirming the attribution of this painting and for his assistance with the catalogue entry.(written commmunication, 3 August 2006).