Portrait de Léonie Dufresne, baronne le Vavasseur, puis marquise de Vaucouleurs de Lanjamet

Carolus-Duran's 1875 portrait of Léonie Dufresne, later Baronne le Vavasseur and eventually Marquise de Vaucouleurs de Lanjamet, is an example of the aristocratic female portraiture that made him the most fashionable portraitist in Paris. These women of the upper classes were among the most powerful social validators; their willingness to sit for a painter conferred enormous prestige. Carolus-Duran's technique — learned from intensive study of Velázquez — gave his sitters an air of Spanish grandeur that flattered without falsifying. The Musée Carnavalet in Paris holds this as a document of Second Empire and early Third Republic Parisian social history.

Carolus-Duran's direct technique — working wet-into-wet with loaded brushes, following Velázquez's method — creates surfaces of remarkable freshness and presence. The aristocratic sitter's costume would be handled with confident, summary strokes that convey the richness of fabric without laboring the detail. The face is modeled with precise attention to the quality of light on skin.