Portrait of Madame de Flesselles

Nattier's 1747 'Portrait of Madame de Flesselles,' now in the Princeton Art Museum, belongs to his late career — by this point he was the established painter of the female court, his mythological portrait formula widely recognised and emulated. The Princeton provenance reflects the pattern of French court portraits entering American academic collections through the dispersal of European holdings in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Madame de Flesselles was a society figure of no exceptional historical prominence, but for Nattier's clientele this was typical: he served the upper bourgeoisie and lesser aristocracy alongside the royal family, producing a continuous stream of refined female portraits that defined the aesthetic of French cultivated femininity in the mid-eighteenth century. The choice of Princeton suggests acquisition through donation or purchase from private European collections.

By 1747 Nattier's technique was fully formed and deployed with confident economy: the pale, silvery skin tones built up through thin glazes, the drapery handled with broad, fluid strokes that capture the movement of silk, and the background — typically a landscape glimpsed through columns or drapery — providing context without competing with the figure.