JEAN-BAPTISTE GREUZE | PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN, SAID TO BE THE ARTIST'S DAUGHTER

Possibly Count Peter Stroganoff (according to an indistinct inscription on the stretcher read as "Tableau apporté par Mon Angelozzi pour le compte de Monsieur le Comte P. de Stroganoff");

Meffre, the Elder;

His sale, Paris, Pillet, 29 March 1867, lot 26 (as "Portrait de mademoiselle Greuze");

Mason;

His sale, Paris, Hotel Drouot, 1 March 1876, lot 15 (as "Portait de mademoiselle Greuze");

Henry Reinhardt III, Chicago;

Mrs. Neil Ford Torrey, Grosse Pointe, Michigan;

With Wildenstein & Co., New York;

Mrs. Gabby Salomon, New York;

Anonymous sale, Sotheby's, New York, 22 May 1997, lot 123;

There purchased by a private French collector;

By whom sold, Sotheby's, New York, 22 January 2004, lot 213;

There acquired by the present collector. 

This beautiful, sensitive portrait of a woman is a mature work by Greuze, likely dating from circa 1780. When it was sold in the 19th century, the sitter was identified as the artist's daughter, though it is possible that the painting was simply a portrait of a beautiful woman from the artist's imagination, as he was known to do. Indeed this painting is similar in date and feel to his famous fantasy portrait of a woman in a white hat, now at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.¹

1. https://collections.mfa.org/objects/34218/the-white-hat?ctx=c75c79e7-70bf-42be-a610-63d221762137&idx=15