“Portrait of Mlle Duthé”

The many portraits of Catherine-Rosalie Gérard, better known by her stage name “Mademoiselle Duthé,” testify to her popularity as one of the most famous actresses in late eighteenth-century Paris. This one is particularly striking in terms of composition: the young woman seems to have been captured in the process of hanging a painting in an interior that might be her own, though the scene actually took place in the painter’s studio. The actress presented the portrait to her lover, the banker Jean-Frédéric Perregaux.