Portrait of young woman

Painted in 1733, this portrait of an unidentified young woman belongs to the early phase of Nattier's mature career, when he was consolidating the elegant style that would make him the dominant portraitist of the French court. The 1730s were years of intense activity: Nattier had emerged from a difficult period in the late 1710s and early 1720s and rebuilt his practice through a combination of mythological allegory and conventional portraiture. The Musée d'art et d'histoire de Narbonne, in the Languedoc region of southern France, holds a varied collection of antiquities and fine art reflecting the city's long history as a Mediterranean trading hub and episcopal seat. A portrait of this type entering a provincial collection suggests either direct acquisition through a local family or later transfer from a Parisian holding. The sitter's youth and the restrained elegance of the composition are characteristic of Nattier's approach to unmarried women of good family in this decade, when his formula was still crystallising before the full Rococo floridity of his 1740s work.

The 1733 date places this work in Nattier's transitional period between Baroque solidity and full Rococo lightness. The palette is somewhat warmer and the modelling slightly more three-dimensional than his later work, with shadows retaining more depth.