Portrait of La maréchale-comtesse de Mailly, née Blanche Charlotte Marie Félicité de Narbonne Pelet

In June 1783 Louis XVI made the veteran soldier Augustin-Joseph de Mailly a marshal of France. He was in his mid-seventies. His third wife, Blanche de Narbonne-Pelet, was in her early twenties, and that same year Vigée Le Brun painted her on this oval canvas, signing and dating it 1783 at the lower left. The picture is known by her new rank, the maréchale de Mailly, the marshal's wife. Ten years later the Revolution caught up with the family. The old marshal refused to emigrate, was imprisoned in 1793, and in March 1794 he was guillotined at Arras, calling out from the scaffold that he remained faithful to his king. His widow lived on until 1840. The portrait stayed with her descendants for generations, was shown at the Vigée Le Brun retrospective in Paris in 2015, and in 2018 it sold at Christie's in London for more than twice its top estimate.