Louis-Marin Bonnet after François Boucher Head of Flora 1769 color engraving printed from eight plates Philadelphia Museum of Art |
Maurice-Quentin de La Tour Portrait of Maria Josepha, Dauphine of France 1749 pastel Gemäldegalerie, Dresden |
Adélaïde Labille-Guiard Head of a Young Woman 1779 pastel Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
Antonio Guardi Head of a Woman ca. 1739 oil on canvas Cleveland Museum of Art |
attributed to Pietro Rotari Head of a Woman ca. 1750 drawing Princeton University Art Museum |
Domenico Maggiotto Woman fixing her Hair ca. 1745 drawing National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
Joshua Reynolds Portrait of a Woman ca. 1780 drawing National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
Samuel De Wilde King Lear in the Storm 1786 drawing Yale Center for British Art |
Henry Fuseli Portrait of Martha Hess ca. 1785 drawing Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
workshop of Jakob Matthias Schmutzer Head of a Young Man 1780 drawing Yale University Art Gallery |
Jean-Étienne Liotard Portrait of a Gentleman in a Gray Coat ca. 1770 watercolor miniature on ivory Milwaukee Art Museum |
Simon-François Ravenet Prince William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland ca. 1755 enamel miniature Cleveland Museum of Art |
Joseph-Charles Marin Bacchante ca. 1786 terracotta Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
Rosalba Carriera Diana ca. 1740 pastel Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (Achenbach Foundation) |
Jean-Baptiste Greuze Head of a Young Woman ca. 1760 drawing Morgan Library, New York |
Jean-Baptiste Greuze Head of an Old Woman ca. 1772-75 drawing Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
"Never, never did she feel in life the sense of recognition, the companionship, the great warm fact of solidarity that she found between the covers of a book! Sometimes she got near it, that warm spot, here in the library on a Friday afternoon: she could crank them up, these girls, get them speaking her language. But it was an effort, a great performance, a show she put on just to make them act for an hour as if she and they did speak it, the same language. She wondered whether the books she loved consoled her precisely because they were the manifestations of her own isolation. They were like little lights in a wilderness, a moor: from a distance they seemed clustered together, multitudinous, but close up you saw that miles and miles of empty blackness separated them."
– Rachel Cusk, from the novel Arlington Park (2006)