Category:Madame Charles Maurice de Talleyrand Périgord (1761–1835) by François Gérard

English: Portrait of Catherine Grand (1762-1834), wife of Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (1754-1838).
"Gérard, a student of Jacques Louis David, was official painter to Empress Joséphine; the sitter was a celebrated beauty, captured in Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun’s youthful portrait from 1783, also at The Met. In 1802, her affair with the statesman Talleyrand was so scandalous that Napoleon demanded they marry; neither was particularly faithful, however, and, by the time this portrait was painted, they had separated. Thus, this is not a pendant to either of the two portraits of Talleyrand at The Met. Gérard’s brush revels in details of the highly fashionable interior: contrasting sun and fire light from the novel chimney installed beneath a window, the diaphanous dress, and the paisley shawl—a modish accessory, but also a nod to the sitter’s birth near Pondicherry, in colonial India." [1]