Another Largillière portrait at Rops

Rops, Belgian auction house, sells on 8 November 2015 a "French, 18th century" portrait of a man, estimated at 2,600 to 3,300 Euro.

They sold another portrait in the same style and with a similar estimate (but with a lot of damage) in August 2015, as I noted in this blog post. This one is in much better condition, and in my opinion better painted as well. It should fetch a lot more than the estimate in my view.

The effortless brilliance of the clothing, the psychology in the look, the casual chic composition, all point to a master portrait artist. 

It lacks some of the masterful flesh painting one can see in the best Largillière works, but it certainly looks like an average work by him to me. Of course, connoisseurs who better know his typical quirks and stylistic elements may well find good reasons to attribute it not to him but to another high-quality portrait painter of the period, but this work is in any case a very good example of this typical style and time. It should easily surpass the estimates.

UPDATE: sold for 2,600 Euro (bottom estimate), my view was too optimistic clearly!