Portrait of a young Woman with Flowers in her Hair

Pierre Chasselat was trained as a miniaturist in the workshop of Joseph-Marie Vien (1716-1809). He exhibited at the Salon in 1793, 1806 and 1810, where he showed mainly miniatures (L. Schildlof, La miniature en Europe, Graz, 1964, I., p. 148). The present sheet, signed, constitutes a relatively rare example of his draughtsmanship and was probably conceived as an autonomous work. Edmond and Jules de Goncourt owned two black chalk portraits of a young lady, heightened with white, by Chasselat now in a private collection (L.-A. Prat, Le dessin Français au XVIII^e siècle, Paris, p. 466).