Jules-Adolphe Goupil

Anonymous sale, Sotheby's, New York, 1 November 1995, lot 161;

Private Collection, United States.

A pupil of Ary Scheffer, Goupil took part in his first Salon in 1857, at the age of eighteen. Initially a portraitist, he later turned to genre painting and historical subjects.

With almost photographic precision, Goupil depicts a fashionable woman, inquisitive and wearing a discreet, mischievous smile, conveying a striking sense of modernity. Wearing a large feathered hat that reveals her auburn-highlighted curls, she is dressed in an elegantly fitted blue satin gown, cinched at the waist with a white ribbon. In her left hand, she holds a porcelain statuette, which appears to have caught her attention. Goupil here emphasizes the personality and inquisitive nature of a fashionable young woman, thereby casting her as an emblem of modernity.