French school; late 18th century.
"Portrait of a lady.
Oil on canvas. Re-drawn.
It presents faults and restorations.
Measurements: 64 x 53 cm.
In this canvas the author portrays a beautiful and young lady with delicate features, captured in the foreground in a kind and demure attitude. The young woman dressed in pink is shown to the viewer playing a harp, although she does not look at the movement of her hands, but looks at the viewer with a slight smile. The young woman represents the ideal of femininity of the 19th-early 19th century, where ladies were instructed to enhance disciplines such as music and music-playing.
As in the rest of Europe, portraiture became the leading genre in French painting in the 17th century, as a consequence of the new social structures that were established in the Western world during that century, embodying the ultimate expression of the transformation in the taste and mentality of the new clientele that emerged among the nobility and the wealthy gentry, who were to take the reins of history in this period. While official circles gave precedence to other artistic genres, such as history painting, and the incipient collectors encouraged the profusion of genre paintings, portraits were in great demand for paintings intended for the more private sphere, as a reflection of the value of the individual in the new society. This genre embodies the permanent presence of the image of its protagonists, to be enjoyed in the privacy of a studio, in the everyday warmth of a family cabinet or presiding over the main rooms of the house.