Marie-Anne Loir Portrait of a Lady as Hebe

Marie-Anne Loir
Paris 1705 - 1783
Portrait of a Lady as Hebe

Oil on canvas
101 x 80,7 cm ; 39¾ by 31¾ in.

Catalogue Note:
Executed with great delicacy of handling, which attests to Marie-Anne Loir’s refined talent, this portrait, whose sitter remains unidentified to this day, partly reprises (or anticipates) another portrait of a young woman as Hebe, offered for sale at Elisabeth Wildenstein’s in Paris in the 1930s (reproduced in The Studio, June 1930, XCVII, no. 397).

Although the position of the sitter’s left arm is different, the rest of her pose is remarkably similar, drawing on a formula that Marie-Anne Loir liked to employ and vary in her female portraits: the bust slightly turned and inclined to the left, while the face turns in the opposite direction, the young woman’s eyes meeting those of the viewer.

Provenance:
Anonymous sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 12 December 1966, lot 164 (as School of Louis Tocqué);

Anonymous sale, Ferri, Paris, 10 June 2009, lot 27;

Where acquired.