Madame de Pompadour at her Tambour Frame

François-Hubert Drouais painted Madame de Pompadour at her Tambour Frame around 1763, one of the most celebrated portraits of Louis XV's royal mistress and one of the finest portraits of a woman at work in the French eighteenth-century tradition. Pompadour is depicted engaged in embroidery at her tambour frame — a domestic accomplishment associated with femininity and graceful leisure — while surrounded by the books and music that reflected her genuine intellectual interests. The portrait was completed just months before her death in 1764 and shows her in her full Rococo splendor, the elaborate dress and setting contrasting with the intimacy of the sewing activity.

Drouais renders the marquise with meticulous precision, particularly in the detailed rendering of her elaborate dress and the embroidery frame. The intimate domestic setting contrasts with the formal splendor of Boucher's earlier portraits of Pompadour.