facing right in purple silk dress with lace cuffs and white-bordered gauze scarf tied at corsage, purple ribbon in her high-piled powdered curled hair, seated in a wooden chair with green cushion at hear easel. Dated 1779, gouache on ivory, heavy ormolu frame with inner beaded border
Christie's London. A strong bid since this fine miniature carried a top pre-sale estimate of £ 12,000. Adelaïde Labille-Guiard was the pupil of the miniaturist François-Elie Vincent whom she married in 1793. She exhibited at the Academy of St Luke in 1774 and in 1782 at the Salon de la Correspondance before becoming an associate of the Royal Academy in Paris the following year. She continued to show her works at the Salon until 1800 and had Mlle Capet as one of her pupils. During the last years of her life her artistic production was very much reduced by a prolonged illness and we know of only a small number of miniatures painted by her, which are all excellent, full of life and expression leaving the ivory to show in places and discreetly touched up with briefly treated in gouache in a bold way.
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