Portrait of Mademoiselle Marie-Anne Adelaide Le Normand
Medium
watercolor on ivory in a silver gilt mount
Dimensions
unframed: 7.3 × 5.8 cm · framed: 8.4 × 6.9 cm
Classification
Portrait Miniature
Department
European Painting and Sculpture
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Gift from J. H. Wade
Accession Number
1921.911
Tags
About this artwork
Mademoiselle Marie-Anne Adelaide Le Normand, a famous Parisian fortune teller, was born in Alençon, France, between 1768 and 1772. Little is known of her early years, but by 1790 she had already established a strong following in Paris. Fortune telling was a highly lucrative field perhaps due to the extreme political unrest that permeated Paris in the 1790s. Although the practice of fortune telling was illegal at the time, people from the highest social classes sought Le Normand's services. She p...