A portraitist in vogue during the Second Empire, Frédérique O’Connell's fortunes changed with the fall of the regime. In the early 1880s, she took a job at Nadar's studio, retouching prints and painting portraits from photographs. This lovely portrait of Ernestine Nadar is a precise reproduction of a photograph at the J. P. Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Curiously, although the artist died in 1885, it bears the date 1886. It was most likely finished by the studio after her death.