2-730-837 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Head of a Young Woman, early 1730s. This work was catalogued as "style of Chardin" when it entered the museum's collection, and was considered a minor rococo revival work of the 1800s. In 2011, the museum asked Alastair Laing, the leading scholar of the artist Boucher, to study it. He confirmed that the painting is a rare survival from the artist's early career—one of only two known oil studies of this type by the artist.