Sophie Crouzet (c. 1801): Art, History and Details

Sophie Crouzet (c. 1801) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Louis Hersent (French, 1777–1860).

The work and its context

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

The sitter's dress deliberately evokes ancient Roman costume. However, the white muslin and straightforward cut also derives from earlier English fashions that favored simplicity in contrast to the elaborate, colorful clothing favored earlier in the 1700s. The transparency of her dress also carries political and cultural meaning: during the French Revolution in 1789, costume began to signify political allegiance, a sign of the character of the person who wore it. For women, transparency became increasingly literal, as in the sheer fabric worn by Crouzet, who came from a family of active revolutionaries.

Object facts

• Title: Sophie Crouzet
• Date: c. 1801
• Creator attribution: Louis Hersent (French, 1777–1860)
• Culture: France, late 18th-early 19th century
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on fabric
• Dimensions: Framed: 101 x 85.5 x 12.5 cm (39 3/4 x 33 11/16 x 4 15/16 in.); Unframed: 81.2 x 65 cm (31 15/16 x 25 9/16 in.)
• Collection: Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960
• Department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1943.659

A detail from the museum

Sophie Crouzet, the sitter in this portrait, is a first cousin of the artist.

Collection credit

Grace Rainey Rogers Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Paintings in the Cleveland Museum of Art. [Cleveland]: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1945.
• Francis, Henry S. “A Portrait by Jacques Louis David.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 32, no. 6 (June 1945): 83–85. Attributed to: Jacques Louis David
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.

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.