Portrait Of A Young Girl With A Coral Necklace, Oil On Canvas, Circa 1820

This anonymous oil on canvas from the early 19th century is remarkably well done. The landscape in the background and the portrait are certainly the work of a professional painter. It remains to be identified. The painting represents the portrait of a little girl dressed in a dress with red flower patterns on a white background posing against a landscape background, her hair tied with ribbons. The young child, with a slightly worried look, poses hieratically like a great lady. She is adorned with a necklace of a double row of coral beads and a pair of earrings also made of coral. The obvious gap between the young girl's still baby face and the seriousness of her pose makes this painting very enigmatic, almost captivating. The landscape in the background and its threatening sky reinforce this feeling of strangeness. This little girl seems to be posing wisely in front of the painter but the slightly sulky pout clearly tells us that she did not want to, probably locked in her social constraints. The painting of children became widespread from the 18th century and multiplied in the 19th century. The arrival of photography in 1820 influenced these portraits which became a kind of snapshots painted on a random background, as we find in studios, here a landscape. About Coral. The rich adornment that adorns the neck of such a young girl surprises us. However, since the end of the 18th century, it has been common to have children wear coral necklaces to which mystical and medicinal virtues, strength and vitality are attributed. Dark red coral like here comes from the Mediterranean. It is particularly prized by the imperial court at the beginning of the 19th century.