Antique French Portrait of a Lady with a Parrot, in the Louis XV Manner

Antique French Portrait of a Lady with a Parrot, in the Louis XV Manner

She sits in a gilt fauteuil upholstered in crimson. Her hair is powdered and dressed close, with a small jeweled pin, and a teal silk ribbon is knotted at her throat. Her black velvet bodice is edged in lace and trimmed with silver rocaille passementerie. On the chair back behind her shoulder perches a green parrot, a fashionable companion in the 18th-century salon and a quiet sign of a household with taste and means.

The face is painted directly and without flattery. The rosy cheeks are frankly applied, the blue eyes clear, the expression composed and a little knowing. She reads as a particular woman rather than an idealized one.

Oil on canvas, unframed, on a keyed stretcher with a central crossbar. Fine craquelure runs across the whole surface, the patina of long life on a wall. There are small, settled losses along the lower edge and at lower right, and a soft bloom in the lower corner. She is ready to hang as she is, or to frame in giltwood.

France, late 18th or 19th century.
22 x 18 in (56 x 46 cm)