2007 Catalogue - Colnaghi

sense of being unseen onlookers into the rituals of the
female toilette and the pose of the lady, seen in full
profile, rather than straight on, is much more
meditative and romantic. Its sideways half-length
composition and fluid handling link it closely with the
subject of Evening, which survives both in painted
form in a picture dated 1734 in a New York private
collection 6 and in the form of two engravings: one, part
of the series by Petit and the other, an English
mezzotint. 7
Our picture belongs to a group of almost life-sized
genre paintings executed during the 1730s, a period in
which Boucher was capitalizing on the French taste for
seventeenth century Dutch genre paintings and the
interest in La Vie Moderne which had been successfully
exploited by de Troy. Stylistically, the dense clear
handling and firm structure of the image in which a
few large forms are clearly delineated and contrasted,
points to a dating in the mid 1730s, contemporary
with Evening. If, as seems probable, it is the painting
recorded in Tessin’s inventory, it may well have been
acquired around 1739, when he is first recorded as
having visited Boucher’s studio. The group of intimate
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half-length depictions of fashionable ladies seen in
close up to which our picture belongs, heralds the more
elaborate depictions of fashionable ladies in interiors
such as Le Dejeuner of 1739 (The Louvre, Paris) and
the Woman fastening her Garter with her Maid of 1742
(Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Madrid) the last of
which was commissioned by Tessin. Even more
directly, the series to which this painting relates, looks
forward to another projected series of paintings of the
Times of Day, commissioned in 1745 by Tessin for
Crown Princess Lovisa Ulrica of Sweden, for which
only the The Milliner/The Morning (National museum,
Stockholm), of 1746, was ever executed. There,
however, the young lady who is also seated at her
dressing table, is portrayed in a much more elaborate
interior, turning towards the viewer to examine some
ribbons brought to her by a young milliner.