A gouache on ivory miniature of “Diane de Chasseresse”
Full figure depiction of Diana, the goddess of the hunt, as a young woman with a quiver full of arrows, resting on a stone block beneath an olive tree. She holds a dead bird in her hand and a greyhound waits by her feet; the background with a classical Italian mountain landscape. She is dressed in the classical manner in sandals, a short red chiton that leaves the right breast exposed, and a gold cloth wrapped around her bound curly dark hair. With original lid. The ivory plaque with a vertical crack in the upper left (ca. 7 cm), two minor retouches in the corners. 22 x 16.3 cm (image dimensions). Framed under glass in an ormolu frame of the period.
Francoise-Reine (Renée) Dagois, 1828.
The French painter Françoise Reine Dagois, née Bézard, was married to the Belgian Jean-Antoine Dagois and exhibited at the Antwerp Salon in 1813. According to an entry in the directory of the famous artist Jean-Baptiste Augustin, she joined his studio as a pupil in 1809. The majority of her rare existing works are carefully executed copies of Neoclassical paintings by Jacques-Louis David. Figures and portraits executed in fine blue ombré pointillé technique are typical of her style.
Literature
For more on this artist cf. Lemoine-Bouchard, Les Peintres en Miniature actifs en France 1650 -1850, Paris 2008, p. 175 f.