Portrait de petite fille en robe blanche, dite Alexandrine Lenormant d'Etiolles

A young girl in a white dress, traditionally identified as Alexandrine Lenormant d"Etiolles—the daughter of Madame de Pompadour—appears in this portrait at the Musee Cognacq-Jay in Paris. If the identification is correct, the painting depicts the child whose death at age nine in 1754 devastated Pompadour, a grief that affected her relationship with the king. The Musee Cognacq-Jay preserves a distinguished collection of French eighteenth-century art.

The child"s white dress creates a luminous central area that Drouais models with subtle variations of warm and cool white. The young face is rendered with the tenderness of Drouais"s most sympathetic child portraits. The palette is dominated by the whites and creams of the dress, with the flesh tones and background providing warmer accents. The handling is delicate, appropriate to the small scale and tender subject.