The Comtesse Daru

David's The Comtesse Daru of 1810, painted during the Empire's height, depicts the wife of Intendant Général Pierre Daru with the formal elegance and psychological directness of his best Imperial period portraits. The Comtesse occupies the upper levels of Napoleonic social hierarchy, and David's treatment creates a study in the particular combination of aristocratic deportment and bourgeois solidity that characterized the Empire's administrative class. The portrait demonstrates his continued mastery of the seated female portrait in his sixties.

The Frick portrait displays David's supreme command of female portraiture in the Empire period. The sitter's red shawl, cashmere texture rendered with meticulous attention, provides the painting's warmest color note against the cooler tones of the white dress and gray background.