Portrait of a young lady

This early portrait of a young lady, painted around 1710 and listed as formerly in the Führermuseum—Hitler's planned art museum in Linz, Austria—is among the many European artworks looted or confiscated by the Nazi regime during the Second World War. The Führermuseum collection was assembled largely through forced sales, confiscations, and direct theft from Jewish collectors, galleries, and European museums between 1938 and 1945. Works catalogued under this provenance are subject to ongoing restitution research by governments, museums, and families. The painting's artistic context is Nattier's earliest mature period, when he was still developing the style that would make him famous. A portrait of a young woman from this era shows his debt to the academic tradition of his predecessors while already displaying the lightening of palette and softening of contour that would characterise his Rococo development. The historical weight of its Führermuseum provenance now forms an inescapable part of the work's biographical identity.

The early date (c.1710) means the painting reflects Nattier's pre-Rococo formation, with stronger modelling and a somewhat heavier palette than his later work. The young sitter is nevertheless rendered with a delicacy and freshness that anticipates his mature female portraits.