Rose-Adélaïde Ducreux
1761–1802

 

This sizzler of a picture is self portrait of significant historical interest. The artist, Rose-Adélaïde Ducreux, is one of a group of female painters who exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1791 - two years after the storming of the Bastille and the first year in which artist members of the public were allowed to display their own paintings in the famous annual exhibition It now hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Although it is the spectacular silk dress, the hair style and the remarkable figure of the subject which perhaps first engages the observer's attention. the musical instrument itself is also meticulously painted.

Depicted with a harpist's eye we can see that colours of the strings are distinguished (red for C and dark for F in the same way that they are today) and what we now would call the 'single action' pedals are painted with almost photographic precision. A fascinatingly realistic detail is the way in which the strings are tied to the tuning pins at the top of the instrument in a slightly untidy manner.

The harp has a ridge on its harmonic curve and its scroll and fluted column (with decorated base) are similar to instruments still in existence which were made by Cousineau - a Parisian family firm of harpmakers that were rivals to Naderman but which had equally good  royal and aristocratic connections.

The instrument is not being played, but it is not a mere prop for the subject: Rose-Adélaïde stands quite naturally as if pleased to be distracted from checking the tuning - the tuning key is held in her right hand.

As a musician as well as a graphic artist this portrait would have been no mean advertisement for her varied talents. On the table rests a song about 'tender love' - are we to gather from this that Mlle. Ducroix also sings to the harp?