Portrait of Suzanne Le Pelletier de Saint Fargeau

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Portrait of Suzanne Le Pelletier de Saint Fargeau: Introduction

Jacques-Louis David painted Portrait of Suzanne Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau in 1804, more than a decade after Suzanne became one of the most publicly charged children of the French Revolution. The Getty records the work as an oil on canvas measuring 60.3 x 49.5 cm, object number 97.PA.36, in the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. The active English title traditionally spells the family name Le Pelletier, while Getty and several scholarly routes use Le Peletier. Both forms refer here to Suzanne Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau, daughter of the Revolutionary deputy Michel Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau. ^{[1] [2] [3]}

This is a small bust-length portrait, not a history painting. Suzanne faces the viewer directly, her dark hair cut short and falling in loose curls, with pale muslin and a black cashmere stole framing her face. The painting's intimacy is striking because the sitter's public story was anything but private. As a child she had been adopted by the French nation after her father's assassination in January 1793. In 1804, David presents her neither as a political emblem nor as an anecdotal victim, but as a young woman whose image carries the weight of a family and a revolution without turning into spectacle. ^{[1] [2] [3]}

At a Glance

• ArtistJacques-Louis David ^{[1] [2] [3] [4]}
• Active TitlePortrait of Suzanne Le Pelletier de Saint Fargeau ^{[1] [2]}
• Getty TitlePortrait of Suzanne Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau ^{[1] [2]}
• Active URL/jacques-louis-david/portrait-of-suzanne-le-pelletier-de-saint-fargeau/ ^[1]
• Date1804 ^{[1] [2] [3] [4]}
• MediumOil on canvas ^{[1] [2] [3] [4]}
• Dimensions60.3 x 49.5 cm; 23 3/4 x 19 1/2 in. ^{[1] [2] [3] [4]}
• Framed Dimensions83.8 x 72.7 x 7.9 cm in the CONA record ^[2]
• RepositoryJ. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center, Los Angeles ^{[1] [2]}
• Repository Number97.PA.36 ^{[1] [2] [4]}
• CONA ID700007374 ^[2]
• StyleFrench Neoclassical portrait ^{[1] [2]}
• SitterSuzanne Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau, French celebrity, 1782-1829 ^{[2] [3]}
• Family ContextDaughter of Michel Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau, 1760-1793, a Revolutionary deputy assassinated in 1793 ^{[2] [5]}
• Portrait TypeSmall bust-length portrait with direct gaze, short dark hair, pale muslin and black cashmere stole ^{[1] [3]}
• Image StatusGetty Open Content and Commons public-domain evidence support later image work, with file-to-object verification still required ^{[1] [3] [4]}

Contents

1. Introduction
2. Object Facts and Getty Record
3. Suzanne and the Le Peletier Legacy
4. A Private Portrait After Public Trauma
5. Hair, Dress and the Titus Cut
6. David's Portrait Practice Around 1804
7. Image and Source Cautions
8. Why the Painting Matters

Object Facts and Getty Record

Getty's CONA record identifies the work as Portrait of Suzanne Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau, a French Neoclassical oil painting by Jacques-Louis David, created in 1804. It gives the unframed dimensions as 60.3 x 49.5 cm and the framed dimensions as 83.8 x 72.7 x 7.9 cm. The current location is the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center, and the repository number is 97.PA.36. ^{[1] [2] [3] [4]}

Google Arts & Culture, using the J. Paul Getty Museum record, gives the title as Portrait of Suzanne Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau, date 1804, medium oil on canvas, dimensions 60.3 x 49.5 cm, credit line The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, and terms of use as Open Content. This makes the Getty route the strongest object and image authority for the page, with Wikimedia Commons providing additional public-domain image files derived from Getty or Google Art Project material. ^{[1] [2] [3] [4]}

The small scale matters. David had made his name through large public works such as The Oath of the Horatii and The Coronation of Napoleon, but this painting asks for a different kind of attention. It is close, frontal and almost compressed. The viewer meets Suzanne at the level of face, hair, dress and gaze rather than through architectural setting or symbolic props. ^{[1] [2] [3] [4]}

Suzanne and the Le Peletier Legacy

Suzanne was the daughter of Michel Le Peletier, Comte de Saint-Fargeau and Marquis de Montjeu. Getty's CONA record states that relationship directly. Her father was assassinated after voting for the death of Louis XVI, and his murder turned him into a Revolutionary martyr. The French Senate's historical account of adoption by the nation identifies the Convention's decree of 25 January 1793 as the first modern French example of public adoption, following the assassination of Le Peletier by the royal bodyguard Pâris. ^{[1] [2] [5]}

That context is necessary, but it must be used with restraint. This portrait was painted in 1804, not in the immediate crisis of 1793. Suzanne was no longer the eleven-year-old child adopted by the nation. Google Arts & Culture states that David agreed to paint her when she was twenty-two, in the year of her engagement to her cousin Léon Le Peletier de Mortefontaine, whom she married in 1806. The painting therefore belongs to a later stage of her life, when her revolutionary celebrity, family history and future marriage all met in a private image. ^{[1] [2] [5]}

The connection to The Last Moments of Michel Lepeletier is unavoidable, but the two works should not be confused. The lost Lepeletier martyr image belonged to the public ritual of Revolution. Suzanne's portrait belongs to private portraiture after the revolutionary emergency had passed into memory. Together, they show how one family moved from public martyrdom into the more complicated afterlife of personal remembrance. ^{[1] [2] [5]}

A Private Portrait After Public Trauma

Google Arts & Culture describes the painting as one of the few commissions David accepted after he began working regularly for Napoleon in 1799. That makes the commission notable. By 1804, David's energy was increasingly directed toward the Napoleonic regime and its images of power. Yet he accepted this intimate portrait of a woman whose family story was tied to an earlier phase of the Revolution. ^{[1] [2] [5]}

The portrait's quietness is part of its meaning. Suzanne is not surrounded by documents, memorial objects or a portrait of her father. David does not dramatize her political inheritance through obvious signs. Instead, he uses the directness of a bust-length likeness. Her gaze is steady, her mouth closed and her shoulders wrapped in dark cloth against pale dress. The black stole introduces a note of gravity without forcing the image into mourning. ^{[1] [2] [5]}

That restraint is one reason the painting feels modern. David allows the sitter to appear as a person rather than a symbol, even though the public knew her as a symbol already. The work's emotional pressure comes from this tension between public history and private presence. ^{[1] [2] [5]}

Hair, Dress and the Titus Cut

The portrait's visual identity depends strongly on Suzanne's hair. Commons structured data associated with the Google Art Project file identifies the hairstyle as a Titus haircut, a short style associated with the turn-of-the-century fashion for antique and post-Revolutionary simplicity. Whether every viewer recognizes the style name or not, the effect is clear: the hair is cropped close enough to make the head and eyes dominate the image. ^{[1] [3]}

The pale muslin dress and dark stole also place the portrait within early nineteenth-century fashion. Google Arts & Culture describes the dress as pale muslin and the black wrap as a cashmere stole. David uses those materials to create a clear opposition between softness and seriousness. The white dress catches light; the dark wrap frames the face; the curls loosen the outline without making the portrait casual. ^{[1] [3]}

The legacy page is right to notice the seeming immediacy of her appearance, but the language should be careful. Suzanne does not look unprepared so much as deliberately unadorned. David's simplicity is designed. It lets the sitter's face carry the psychological force of the image. ^{[1] [3]}

David's Portrait Practice Around 1804

This portrait belongs to a different register from David's large political and imperial compositions. It is closer to his refined portrait studies, including Madame Récamier, Portrait of Madame de Verninac and the family portraits of the Sériziats. In those works, David used dress, pose and economy of setting to shape the sitter's social identity. In Suzanne's case, the economy is even sharper because the canvas is small and the background is minimal. ^{[1] [2]}

The portrait also sits beside David's broader career as an image-maker of the Revolution and Empire. He had painted martyrs, legislators, philosophers and emperors. Here, he paints someone whose public identity had been made by a martyr image but whose adult life could not be contained by that story. The painting is therefore both connected to politics and resistant to political simplification. ^{[1] [2]}

The result is a portrait of unusual density. It does not need a crowd or a stage. Suzanne's face, hair and clothing become the place where private memory and public history meet. ^{[1] [2]}

Image and Source Cautions

The page keeps the current page image while the source note identifies Getty as the strongest object and image authority. Getty and Google Arts & Culture support the Open Content status for the object route, while Commons supplies public-domain Google Art Project and Getty-derived files with the usual jurisdiction caveat. Any later image-refresh or annotated-image work should verify the file against Getty object number 97.PA.36, preserve the difference between Getty image terms and Commons reuse notes, and avoid confusing Suzanne's portrait with David's lost Lepeletier martyr image. ^{[1] [2] [3] [4]}

Why the Painting Matters

Portrait of Suzanne Le Pelletier de Saint Fargeau matters because it shows David returning to a Revolutionary subject through portraiture rather than propaganda. Suzanne's father had been central to one of the Revolution's most charged martyr narratives, and David's lost image of him shaped that memory. In 1804, however, David does not recreate the father's martyrdom. He paints the daughter as a young woman at a transitional moment in her own life. ^{[1] [2] [5]}

The painting also broadens the reader's sense of David's portraiture. It is not only a likeness of a famous sitter. It is a quiet record of how political violence leaves human afterlives. Suzanne's history explains why the portrait is important, but the image itself refuses to become merely explanatory. It remains poised, frontal and private. ^{[1] [2] [5]}

Seen within the wider Jacques-Louis David paintings group, this portrait should guide readers from the public images of Revolution toward the quieter portraits that followed. It is a small canvas with a long historical shadow. ^{[1] [2] [5]}

Frequently Asked Questions

References

1. Google Arts & Culture, Portrait of Suzanne Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau, accessed 27 July 2026.
2. Getty CONA, Portrait of Suzanne Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau, accessed 27 July 2026.
3. Wikimedia Commons file, Jacques-Louis David, Suzanne Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau, Google Art Project, accessed 27 July 2026.
4. Wikimedia Commons file, David, Portrait of Suzanne Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau, 1804, accessed 27 July 2026.
5. Sénat, Proposition de loi visant à accorder la nationalité française aux pupilles de la Nation, accessed 27 July 2026.

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