Portrait of the Marquise de la Ferté-Imbault

A woman in a silk-like pale cream gown trimmed with rose-colored ribbons sits in a chair, holding a black mask in her hand. Behind her hangs a large blue drape.

The sitter is the Marquise de la Ferte-Imbault, daughter of Madame Geoffrin. Her mother noted in her notebook that she had Nattier paint the portrait when her daughter was 25. She wears a white domino (a hooded gown) edged with rose-colored ribbons and holds a masquerade mask. A portrait of her mother, Madame Geoffrin, painted by Nattier two years earlier, is also in the Tokyo Fuji Art Museum, and the two form a pair.

Nattier made popular the costumed portrait, in which high-society ladies were painted as mythological goddesses, and he also served as official painter to the daughters of Louis XV. In later years the critic Diderot attacked him, saying he painted with rouge and powder, but his major works of this period are said to be full of rich stylistic beauty and delicate sensibility.