Portrait de Mademoiselle X, Marquise Anforti

Carolus-Duran was the most fashionable portrait painter in Paris in the 1870s–80s, whose studio attracted both wealthy sitters and ambitious young artists — Sargent was his most famous pupil. His Portrait de Mademoiselle X, Marquise Anforti belongs to his mature period when his Velázquez-derived technique — silver-grey tones, gestural brushwork, powerful tonal contrasts — was at its most assured. The marquise's aristocratic title and elaborate dress signal the high social register of his clientele; such portraits were submitted to the Salon as demonstrations of his mastery of the grand manner.

Carolus-Duran builds the portrait in the alla prima manner he had absorbed from Velázquez and Courbet: broad initial masses of tone, refined through selective reworking, without extensive preparatory glazing. The sitter's face emerges from a dark neutral ground through warm underpainting and precise cool highlights on the forehead and cheekbone.