Portrait of Madame Charles-Pierre Pecoul

In 1784 Jacques-Louis David was at work on the picture that would make his reputation, the Oath of the Horatii, all stern republican virtue and hard Roman edges. Away from that public ambition he painted this woman, his own mother-in-law, born Potain and married to Charles-Pierre Pecoul, the wealthy man who held the royal building contracts in Paris. David had married their daughter Charlotte two years earlier, and the family's money helped underwrite his career. Here he asks nothing heroic of her. She sits in a pink gown trimmed with fine lace, older and composed, looking steadily out. He painted a companion portrait of her husband at the same time, and the pair have stayed together in the Louvre.