Half-length, seated, turned to the left. She wears a dress of figured brocade, worked with coloured flowers and foliage on a white ground, and trimmed with white ribbons; her sleeves are short and edged with lace. On her head is a sort of mob cap, or headdress of lace, tied under the chin with a striped ribbon; her hair is short and powdered. In front of her is a frame of embroidery called tambour-work, which she is working, her right hand being above, and her left under the canvas. The background is grey, with a red curtain to the right. Painted in an oval. On canvas, 2 ft. 7-1/2 in. high, by 2 ft. wide. This picture has been attributed, but quite unwarrantably, to Greuze, who does not appear to have painted Louis XV.'s mistress at all, and certainly could not have done so when she was as young as she is here represented. It is in fact a replica (and by no means a bad one) of a portrait by Drouais, of which a great many repetitions are extant, and of which the original--a full-length--is now at Mentmore, Lord Rosebery's. The Mentmore picture was purchased for £1,000. Drouais was an indifferent artist whose name would long have passed into oblivion, had he not painted princes and princesses. Diderot drew this just estimate of his works:--"Tous les visages de cet homme-là ne sont que le rouge vermillon le plus précieux, artistement couché sur la craie la plus fine et la plus blanche.... Il n'y en a pas une de laide, et pas une qui ne déplût sur la toile. Ce n'est pas de la chair; car, où est la vie, l'onctueux, le transparent, les tons, les dégradations, les nuances?" And Larousse endorses this view with the following remarks:--"Toutes ces peintures, habilement traitées d'ailleurs comme métier, n'ont rien de saillant, aucune puissance, aucune originalité. Les têtes sont banales, ternes, sans physionomie. L'allure est gauche et pénible. Les personnages sont fort mal habillés, bien que les draperies soient exécutées en trompe-l'oeil et avec magnificence." Madame de Pompadour is here represented at about the age of thirty-five, a period when, having lost the influence of a lover over the debauched and fickle Louis XV., she endeavoured to retain her power by ministering to his pleasures and vices. Her appearance completely tallies with the account given of her:--"Elle était assez grande, bien faite, les cheveux, châtain clair, tres-beaux, avec une peau d'une grande finesse et d'une blancheur éclatante. Mais elle avait un genre de beauté qui se fane vite: ses chairs molles s'infiltraient, s'enflammaient aisément; elle avait des langueurs et des pâleurs maladives."