(Paris 1781–1853)
Portrait of a young lady with a straw hat,
signed and dated at lower right: Blondel 1830,
oil on canvas, 121.9 x 90.2 cm, framed

Provenance:
sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 25 January 2001, lot 224;
sale, Millon & Associés, Paris, 26 June 2002, lot 93;
sale, Christie’s, New York, 19th April 2007, lot 337

The present painting is an example of how the female figure was represented during the Restoration period in early 19th century France. Neo-Classicist portraitists such as Girodet (Portrait of Comtesse de Bonneval, 1800), Boilly (Portrait of Madame d’Aucourt de Saint Just, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Lille), and Horace Vernet (Portrait of Madame Philippe Le Noir, 1814, Louvre) depicted their female sitters in idealised naturalistic settings characterised by wide, sometimes mountainous landscapes, with rivers and ponds. The influence of English portraiture from the mid-18th century, such as works by Gainsborough, is also apparent.

The girl in the present picture wears a white dress – a characteristic of many portraits painted by Jacques-Louis David (Napoleon is known to have loved Josephine wearing this colour). However, the blissful facial expression and the vegetation surrounding the figure are elements announcing the arrival of Romanticism which infiltrated the prevailing Neo-Classicist manner. Blondel uses elegant, delicately placed brushstrokes to emphasise the beauty of the young girl, who is dressed according to latest fashion prevalent around 1830: the garment is crossed at the neck, exposing the neck and upper chest and accentuating the sloping shoulders – an important ideal of beauty in those days; the waist is still narrow, but lowered; the dress has Gigot sleeves – a fashion trend created by the Duchess of Berry (the daughter-in-law of Charles X); and the face is a perfect oval. The sitter wears her hair bound to a braided bun, and the bands adorning the wide-brimmed straw hat lend the extremely elegant dress what seems to be a rustic touch.

Blondel received numerous honours throughout his life and was commissioned to decorate of a large number of monumental buildings during the Restoration and the subsequent July Monarchy. Trained in the studio of Baron Regnault, he was awarded the Prix de Rome in 1803 and between 1809 and 1811 stayed at the Villa Medici, where he became a friend of Ingres, who portrayed him in 1809. After his return to France, he painted the ceiling decoration in the vestibule of the Galerie d’Apollon at the Louvre (1819), the decoration of the rooms at the Conseil d’Etat (1827), the transept of the church of Saint Thomas d’Aquin, (1831–51), the salons of the Diana Gallery in the Palace of Fontainebleau, and several rooms in the Palais de la Bourse, as well as numerous historical portraits for the galleries of the Palace of Versailles.