This shows the actress Madame Favart (1727-1772), wife of the actor, and leading figure in the Comédie Italienne, Charles Simon Favart. She is shown in the costume worn for the role of La Vieille in Egidio Duni's Le Fée Urgele a play in which she created the role of the heroine.

The daughter of two musicians for the deposed King of Poland Stanislas Leszcynski whose court at Lunéville became famous as a cultural centre, Justine Duronceray was educated in dance, music and literature, and performed under the stage name Mlle Chantilly in 1744 at the Saint-Laurent Fair, Paris dancing the role of Laurence in Les Fêtes Publiques. In 1745 she married the theatre director Charles-Simon Favart who between 1746 and 1748 set up a company at the Théâtre de la Monnaie de Bruxelles where she became a success dancing in works created by her husband.

On their return to Paris in 1749 she abandoned dancing in favour of acting at the Comédie Italienne, but was confined in a convent in 1750 after becoming the mistress of Maurice, Comte de Saxe, a Marshal of France and her husband’s patron. She returned to the stage after the death of the Marshal and became a great favourite at the Comedie Italienne where she was an advocate of realism in stage costume. Her life was fictionalised in Offenbach’s 1878 comic opera Madame Favart.

One of a collection of 26 theatrical lithographs. The lithographer is not named but all the lithographs appear to have been published by Robert Sayer, London (1772).