Half-length Portrait of a Seated Woman (1781): Art, History and Details

Half-length Portrait of a Seated Woman (1781) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Charles-Nicolas Cochin (French, 1715–1790).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Cochin was one of the great portraitists of the 18th century because he made many drawings of some of the most prominent men and women of his time. Typically, his portrait drawings show the sitter in profile, like a bust on a coin or medal. However, toward the end of his life, he began to favor the half-length format we see here. Although he signed and dated this sheet, he unfortunately did not inscribe it with the sitter's name. Recently, two related drawings showing similarly dressed women seated in the same chair we see here sold at auction in Paris. All three sheets probably depict members of the same family.

Object facts

• Title: Half-length Portrait of a Seated Woman
• Date: 1781
• Creator attribution: Charles-Nicolas Cochin (French, 1715–1790)
• Culture: France
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: black chalk
• Dimensions: Sheet: 16.5 x 11.4 cm (6 1/2 x 4 1/2 in.); Secondary Support: 25.3 x 20.2 cm (9 15/16 x 7 15/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - French
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 2008.393

Collection credit

Bequest of Muriel Butkin

Further reading listed by the museum

• Foster, Carter E., Sylvain Bellenger, and Patrick Shaw Cable. French Master Drawings from the Collection of Muriel Butkin. [Cleveland, Ohio]: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2001.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.