Portrait of the Marquise de la Ferté-Imbault, bust-length

The sitter for the present portrait, born Marie-Thérèse Geoffrin, was the daughter of the famous eighteenth-century salonnière, Madame Geoffrin. In 1733, Marie-Thérèse married a member of the d©stampes family, the Marquis de la Ferté-Imbault. The present lot is related to the three-quarter-length portrait of the Marquise holding a mask, signed and dated 1740, now in the Fuji Art Museum, Tokyo (see X. Salomon, Jean-Marc Nattier, 1685-1766, exhibition catalogue Versailles, 1999-2000, pp. 123-25, no. 26).