Offered by Antichità di Alina
Portrait of a Young Woman with Rose and à la Turque Headscarf
France, late 18th century
Marie-Victoire Lemoine (Paris, 1754–1820), attributable
Oil on canvas, oval format
Canvas size: 78 × 58 cm – With frame: 100 × 83 cm
Original giltwood frame, Directory period
A young woman offers a rose with calm restraint. She is dressed in a satin gown with fur trim, her face softly framed by a transparent veil arranged à la turque. Her expression is composed, her figure turned with natural poise toward the viewer. The palette is subdued, the composition free of superfluous detail.
The painting is attributable to Marie-Victoire Lemoine, a Parisian painter active between the Ancien Régime and the Bourbon Restoration. Born into a bourgeois family, she lived her entire life with her sisters—several of whom were also painters, including Marie-Denise Villers. Unmarried and independent, Lemoine first exhibited in 1779 at the Salon de la Correspondance with a portrait of the princesse de Lamballe. She later took part in the official Paris Salons through 1814. She was a pupil of the academic history painter François-Guillaume Ménageot and likely benefited from the proximity and influence of Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, with whom she shared a household for a time.
The execution of this portrait—particularly in the treatment of textures, the luminosity of the fabric, and the delicacy of the sitter’s features—shows clear affinities with works securely attributed to Lemoine, such as Jeune fille tenant une colombe (1793), formerly exhibited at the Salon, and Une jeune femme appuyée sur le bord d’une croisée (1799), now in the National Gallery of Victoria. As in those examples, the sitter is not idealized but presented with dignity and clarity.
The rose and turban-like veil, although drawn from late 18th-century fashion trends, are treated with restraint. Rather than exotic flourish, they suggest a neoclassical sense of self-possession. The sitter recalls a modern vestal—not devoted to religion, but to beauty as a form of discipline. A visual parallel may be drawn to Antonio Canova’s Vestale (1818–1819): both figures combine silence, inner structure, and physical elegance without ornament.
The canvas is original and unlined, with a fine and stable craquelure consistent with its period and technique. The giltwood frame is also original, from the Directory period—a rare survival that preserves the visual harmony as it was initially conceived.
