Jean-François Gilles Colson

Charles Auguste Louis Joseph Demorny, Duc de Morny (1811–1865), Paris;
His sale, Paris, Palais de la Présidence du Corps Législatif, 2 June 1865, lot 94 (as Chardin), for 8,300 Francs to Heine;
Stein Collection, Paris;
Princesse Murat;
Prince Joachim Murat;
Anonymous sale, New York, Sotheby’s, 25 May 2000, lot 81;
With Bernheimer, Munich, from whom acquired by the present owner.

Paris, Galerie Martinet, Tableaux et dessins de l'école française, principalment du XVIIIe siècle tires de collections d'amateurs, 1860, no. 93 (as Chardin);
Pairs, Galerie Cailleux, Ames et Visages de France au XVIIIe siècle, May–June 1961, no. 18 (as French School, 18th century).

J. Guiffrey, Catalogue raisonné de l'œuvre peint et dessiné de J.–B. Siméon Chardin, Paris 1908, p. 39, cat. no. 94;
A. Dayot, J.-B.-Siméon Chardin, Paris, 1907, p. 39, cat. no. 94 (as Chardin);
G. Wildenstein, Chardin, Paris 1933, p. 180, cat. no. 295 (as Chardin).

Long believed to have been a work by Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin (1699–1779), this charming portrait of a young girl lost in thought was only identified as a work by Colson in the 1990s. Colson was the son of the miniaturist Jean-Baptiste Gilles, and was likely the pupil of Nonotte and Imbert of the Lorraine School. He specialised in portraits and genre scenes, and his position as director and coordinator of building at the Château de Navarre, the family residence of Charles-Godefroy de la Tour d'Auvergne, Sovereign Duke of Bouillon, Prince of Turenne (in whose personal service Colson worked for forty years), forced him to become engineer, architect, landscaper and even sculptor. Very much a man of letters, Colson wrote treatises on perspective, lectured at the Lycée des Arts in Paris, and wrote reviews of exhibitions and salons. He exhibited his own work at the Salons of 1793, 1795 and 1797, and – a year before his death – was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences and a member of the Academy of Arts and Letters of Dijon, his home town.