(Tournus 1725-1805 Paris) A portrait of a young woman in a cap, facing left, pastel on cardboard, 31,8 x 24,2 cm, mounted, unframed, (Sch)

Comparable Literature: P. Grate, French Paintings II: Eighteenth Century, Stockholm 1994, p. 160-161, Kat. 149; Jean-Bapiste Greuze, exh.cat. Dijon, Musée des Beaux-Arts, June 11 – August 7, 1977, Cat. 29.

The young woman in the present study may be the artist’s wife who sat for his paintings several times. The same pose of a girl looking towards the left can be found in an oil painting in the Nationalmuseum Stockholm (36 x 27 cm, Inv. NM 2197, Grate 1994, p. 160) and in a large oil sketch for the painting "La Ménagère surprise" in the Musée Grobet-Labadié in Marseille (exh.cat. Dijon 1977, Cat. 29).Two red chalk drawings and another painting with the portrait are preserved in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Besancon (Inv.847.4.1).

All these works are supposedly related to a composition with the title "Les offres deshonnêtes" which has never been executed but may have survived through a drawing in a private collection (Grate 1994, p. 161, No. 4); the head oft he girl, however, is rendered in profile and is not depicted, as with the other versions, in three-quarters portraits. Anopther portrait study oft he same girl in an almost identical pose was sold with Sotheby's, New York (Sale 2282, Janaury 27, 2010, lot 145).