DAVID, Jacques-Louis
(b. 1748, Paris, d. 1825, Bruxelles)

Portrait of the Marquise d'Orvilliers

1790
Oil on canvas, 131 x 98 cm
Musée du Louvre, Paris

In the first period of the Revolution, David continued to paint portraits of the cultivated upper classes and aristocracy. In 1790, a year of social calm, he had painted the Marquise d'Orvilliers and the Countess de Sorcy. These two women were the Rilliet sisters, Robertine and Anne-Marie-Louise, who had both married rich and titled husbands, and David shows them dignified and at ease, wearing the simple fashions of the day.