Portrait of Baroness Nathaniel de Rothschild, née Charlotte de Rothschild

In 1848 the painter Ingres finished a celebrated portrait of Betty de Rothschild, wife of the Paris banker James de Rothschild, shown with her hand near her chin. In 1866 Gérôme painted her daughter Charlotte and borrowed that gesture, the hand raised to the chin, along with a fan held loosely at her waist. Charlotte had married her cousin Nathaniel, of the English branch of the family, and she was an artist in her own right, a watercolourist who showed regularly at the Paris Salon from 1864. Gérôme stands her at full length in a crowded, costly room, probably in the couple's house on the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. There is a carved chimneypiece with two bronze elephants, red armchairs, a patterned carpet, and pictures hung up the wall behind her. All of it fits on a wooden panel less than 50 centimetres high.