Comtesse Daru (1810)

Jacques-Louis David: Comtesse Daru

David signed this portrait at four o’clock on March 14, 1810. He had executed it as a surprise for Comte Daru, who had obtained for David his payment for Le Sacre, the vast painting of the coronation of Napoleon and Josephine. The subject’s character, so sympathetically conveyed by David, was characterized by her admirer Stendhal as “forceful, frank, and jolly.”

Source: Art in The Frick Collection: Paintings, Sculpture, Decorative Arts, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996.