Madame Grand (Noël Catherine Verlée, 1761–1835)

Vigee Le Brun showed this portrait at the Paris Salon of 1783, a landmark year for her. That spring she had been admitted to the Royal Academy, one of only four women allowed in. The sitter is Noel Catherine Verlee, a celebrated beauty born to a French family near Pondicherry in India, which led Parisians to nickname her l'Indienne, the Indian woman. She looks up and away, a sheet of music in her hands, in a pose curators tie to older paintings of Saint Cecilia, the patron of music. One reviewer praised the picture's bewitching sensuality. Years later this same woman would marry the great survivor of French politics, the diplomat Talleyrand, who served kings, the Revolution and Napoleon in turn.