The Tradeswoman in the Dressing Room
Medium
Watercolor and gouache, with pen and black ink, on cream wove paper
Dimensions
30.1 × 22 cm (11 7/8 × 8 11/16 in.)
Classification
watercolor
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
107707
Rights
Public Domain
Art Historical Context
Nicolas Lavreince’s *The Tradeswoman in the Dressing Room* (1782) captures a fleeting moment of everyday elegance in late eighteenth-century Paris. The Swedish-born artist, who spent much of his career in France, specialized in intimate genre scenes that blended Rococo lightness with subtle social observation. Here, a vendor appears in a private boudoir, offering her wares to a fashionable woman—an encounter that hints at the lively commerce and shifting social boundaries of the period just before the French Revolution. Measuring just over 30 by 22 centimeters, the work demonstrates Lavreince’s refined command of watercolor and gouache heightened with pen and ink. These delicate media allowed him to render shimmering fabrics, soft shadows, and intricate details with remarkable freshness, qualities that made his drawings highly sought after for engraving and private collections. Today housed in the Art Institute of Chicago’s Prints and Drawings department, the sheet offers modern viewers an enchanting glimpse into the material culture and quiet domestic rituals of the ancien régime.
About the Artist
Nicolas Lavreince · 1740–1812
**Nicolas Lavreince (Niklas Lafrensen the Younger)** Nicolas Lavreince, born Niklas Lafrensen on October 30, 1737, in Stockholm, Sweden, was the son of the esteemed miniature portrait painter Niklas Lafrensen the Elder and Magdalena Stuur. He received his initial training under his father, mastering the delicate techniques of miniature painting and gouache on ivory, paper, and parchment, which be...