Portrait of a Woman with a Cat

Description A student of medicine at Uppsala University, to his father's horror, Peter Adolf Hall became an artist, not a doctor. From May 1766 he worked in Paris and was elected a member of the academy. He portrayed several members of the French Royal Family and was appointed "Peintre de Roi" (Painter to the Court). After supporting the French Revolution he was forced into exile in 1791 and died in Belgium a few years later. Along with Jean Honoré Fragonard he introduced a looser style of miniature painting to France. This portrait of an unknown woman is in a black wood frame with a rim of gilt metal around the miniature.

Provenance Henry Walters, Baltimore (?) [date and mode of acquisition unknown]; Walters Art Museum, 1931, by bequest.

Credit Acquired by Henry Walters (?)