Collection Online
Portrait of an old lady

Portrait of an old lady
(mid 18th century)

Medium
oil on canvas
Measurements
42.2 × 32.0 cm
Accession Number
551-4
Department
International Painting
Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Bequest of Howard Spensley, 1939
This digital record has been made available on NGV Collection Online through the generous support of Digitisation Champion Ms Carol Grigor through Metal Manufactures Limited
Gallery location
17th & 18th Century Decorative Arts & Paintings Gallery
Level 2, NGV International
About this work

Françoise Duparc was one of the earliest and most significant female painters working in eighteenth-century France. Born into a family of artists, Duparc was trained by her father, a Marseilles sculptor, and the painter Jean-Baptiste van Loo at Aix-en-Provence. Duparc worked as a portraitist throughout Europe before returning to Marseilles in 1771 and joining the Academy of Fine Arts in 1776. The handful of confirmed paintings by Duparc reveal an affinity with the austere and moralising realism of the Le Nain brothers from a century earlier, which can also be seen in this image of an elderly woman dressed with severe but refined simplicity.

Subjects (general)
Emotions and Mental States Human Figures Portraits
Subjects (specific)
bonnets (hats) busts (general, figures) elderly ribbon (material) women (female humans)