Portrait of a lady, half-length, holding a fan

Jean-Baptist Perronneau was among the leading portraitist of eighteenth-century France, alongside his competitor Maurice Quentin de la Tour. This portrait reflects his sympathetic approach to capturing the character of his sitters, paying particular attention to the depiction of their hands and the drapery— details which he was known to execute with great care from a live model. The earliest record of the painting appears in a 1908 article in L’Illustration, which featured the collection of the late Camille Groult. Groult was one of the greatest 19th century collectors of Jean-Antoine Watteau’s drawings, as well as works by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Hubert Robert, and Joseph Mallord William Turner. He was an equally passionate admirer of Perronneau, having rediscovered thirty-two of the artist’s portraits— both oils and pastels. He preferred acquiring works directly from private collections rather than through dealers and discovered this painting toward the end of his life (D’Arnoult, loc. cit.). The 1908 article offered a rare glimpse into his famous collection, permitted by his widow, as Groult kept his home and collection private during his lifetime. A photograph published at the time shows this painting hanging in the central hall of his apartment on Avenue de Malakoff in Paris, flanked by two Perronneau pastels, Monsieur Olivier and Madame Olivier (Private collection; ibid.)