Portrait of Jeanne-Henriette Augustine de Fourcy, Marquise de Puységur (1692-1737)

This 1730 pendant portrait of Jeanne-Henriette Augustine de Fourcy, Marquise de Puységur, now in the Baltimore Museum of Art, was evidently painted as a pair with the portrait of her husband the Marquis (also dated 1730), forming the kind of pendant portrait commission that Largillière regularly received from aristocratic couples. The practice of commissioning paired portraits of husband and wife was deeply embedded in French noble culture as a way of documenting marital alliance, social status, and dynastic continuity. The Baltimore Museum of Art holds important French painting, and this Largillière forms part of their eighteenth-century European holdings. The Marquise died in 1737, making this one of the last portraits made of her; whether it was conceived as a memorial or simply as a record of the couple at a given moment, the work captures a woman in middle age with the warm-toned refinement characteristic of Largillière's female portraits.

Female pendant portraits required Largillière to develop a complementary composition to the male portrait—typically with the woman turned in the opposite direction to create a paired conversation when the two works are hung together. The Marquise's portrait would have matched the Marquis in scale, format, and tonal register while accommodating the different costume conventions of female aristocratic dress.