[1] With his portraits of Philippe-Laurent de Joubert and Madame Trudaine, it was one of three paintings left incomplete because of the advance of the French Revolution – all three figures were arrested or emigrated.

An infant's head is also shown in the cot – this is Amédée de Pastoret, a future conseiller d'Etat, painted by Ingres in 1826.

Madame Pastoret is from the upper class but is painted here without any finery, as befitted the period, when any display of wealth would have been viewed with suspicion.

That the picture is unfinished is shown by the blotchy background created with short brush strokes, and by the fact that the sewing needle in Madame Pastoret's hand is missing.

[1] The painting was still in David's studio at the time of his death, when it was sold for 400 francs to its subject and remained in her family until the 1890 death without issue of her grand-daughter, the marquise de Rougé du Plessis-Bellière, née Marie de Pastoret.