Pauline Augustin, née Ducruet

On July 8, 1800 Augustin married his student Pauline Ducruet. Although Pauline adopted her husband's painting style and technique, her work lacks the energetic and vivid intensity in the sitters' faces found in Augustin's miniatures and produces a rather mawkish impression. Painting a large-scale miniature was time-consuming and required a lot of patience.¹Augustin's first large-scale miniature was his famous self-portrait (1796),which was followed by portraits of the sculptors Callamard (1801) and Chaudet (1804). Augustin's extraordinarily delicate painting technique used in small as well as in large miniatures was poorly received by some of his contemporaries² and was no longer employed after his death. A small reproduction of this portrait is also intimated on a watercolour showing his studio (1810). Pauline Augustin kept this miniature as long as she lived.
B. P.