Jean-Baptiste Perronneau

Anonymous sale, Paris, Hotel Drouot, 13-15 April 1905, lot 300;
With Wildenstein & Co., Paris, 1909;
Mortimer L. Schiff;
His sale, London, Christie's, 24 June 1938, lot 80 (as Portrait of a Lady), there purchased by Wildenstein;
With Colnaghi, New York (as Portrait of Lady Coventry);
From whom purchased by The Cleveland Museum of Art in 1983 [Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund, acc. no. 83.15].

Paris, La Salle de Jeu de Paume des Tuileries, Exposition de Cent Portraits de Femmes, 23 April-1 July 1909, no. 89.

L. Vaillat and R. Dell, Maîtres du XVIIIe Siècle-Cent Portraits de Femmes des écoles Anglaise et Française, Paris 1910, no. 89;
L. Vaillat and P.R. de Limay, J.B. Perronneau (1715-1783) sa vie et son oeuvre, Paris and Brusells 1923, pp. 122, 179, 191, 229;
E. Bénézit, Dictionnaire critique et documentaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs , 1976, vol. 8, p. 237;
Cleveland Museum of Art, Catalogue of Paintings:  Part Three.  European Paintings of the 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries, Cleveland 1982, p. 177;
A. Chong, European & American Painting in The Cleveland Museum of Art:  A Summary Catalogue, Cleveland 1993, p. 177, reproduced.

The following condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com , an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting has been recently restored and should most likely be hung as is. The canvas has been lined. The retouches are visible under ultraviolet light addressing some cracking in the background and perhaps a thin break in the canvas approximately one and a half inches in the lower left background. In the figure herself there is no restoration in her chest and hardly any in her face, except for a few spots on the extreme right side of her face and neck. Clearly visible pentimenti can be seen above the shoulder on the left and above the blouse on the chest.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Most famous for his lively and exquisitely rendered pastels, Perroneau also produced a small number of portraits in oils.  In these paintings, he retains the handling of his work in chalk, using light, flicking brushstrokes to produce a shimmering silvery effect.  This oil, Portrait of a Lady, is one of a pendant pair, the other depicting a Man, Said to be George William Coventry, 6^th Earl of Coventry (sold Paris, Sotheby's, 25 June 2008, lot 73, for €54,750).  Both pictures are about the same size (the present canvas is about 3 centimeters wider than the other) and signed and dated the same way and same year.  They are also painted within fictive ovals, a device not common in France, although often seen in British portraiture, particularly of the 17^th century.

The identification of the present sitter as Lady Coventry has been suggested repeatedly in the past.  It was first put forward by Ratouis de Limay in his catalogue raisonné of the artist in 1923 and again in 1946 (see Literature).   The suggestion was based by on depictions of Lord and Lady Coventry in a pair of pastels by Perroneau's great rival, Maurice Quentin de La Tour.¹   This, however, may be a confusion, as the magnificent  Portrait of the Countess of Coventry by de la Tour (now in the Musée de l'Art et Archéologie, Troyes) depicts Lord Coventry's first wife, Maria Gunning, a famous beauty of the age.  Maria died in 1760, and in 1764 the Earl took as his second wife Barbara, daughter of Lord St. John; thus, given the painting's date of 1773, the sitter would have to be her.  Sir Joshua Reynolds also painted a portrait of the Countess in 1764/65 (now Buscot Park, Oxfordshire): seen from three quarters view, the image does afford enough of an idea of the sitter's physiognomy to suggest that these paintings might represent the same person; however, this must remain a highly tentative identification.

Similarly, Ratouis de Limay, on the basis of the possible connection to the Coventrys, suggested that Perroneau may have made a trip to England during the first half of the 1770s.  The present portrait and its mate were, he reported, "trouvées en Angleterre" and, with lack of secure information about the artist's whereabouts in these years (having not shown in the Salon from 1773 to 1776), he hypothesized a trip across the Channel.  Sadly, he does not provide any information on the paintings' English provenance, and the present picture is not securely recorded until a 1905 sale in Paris.

1. See X. Salmon, Maurice Quentin de La Tour: Le voleur d'âmes, Versailles 2004, 147-9, cat. no. 36, reproduced, and also figs. 1-2.