Portrait of Madame Houbigant, born Nicole Adéläide Deschamps"

Nicole Adélaïde Deschamps, born into a family connected to the perfume trade and married into the Houbigant dynasty, represents the class of wealthy Parisian businesswomen who commissioned portraits in the Consulate and early Empire periods. Blondel's 1807 portrait, now at the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, shows him working in the formal portrait mode demanded by upper-bourgeois clients who wanted images combining likeness with social dignity. The Houbigant family name was associated with luxury perfumery founded in Paris in 1775, and this portrait documents a moment when commercial wealth was being translated into the cultural capital of formal portraiture. The Speed Art Museum's acquisition reflects American collecting of French academic portraiture, which gained market interest in the twentieth century after decades of neglect.

Academic female portraiture in the Empire period required careful management of fashionable dress, jewellery, and setting to signal status while maintaining the sitter's face as the portrait's primary focus. Blondel used the convention of a neutral or lightly indicated background to prevent setting from competing with the subject, directing all light toward the face and décolletage.