Le Salon de l’artiste sur le lac de Constance, by Louise Cochelet, 1816

Louise Cochelet (1785-1835), was a devoted school friend of Hortense de Beauharnais, and when Napoléon made the latter - his step-daughter and sister-in-law - Queen of Holland, Louise became her reader. After the fall of the Empire, Louise joined Hortense when she fled France.  Their party eventually found refuge in Constance - where this study was painted - and they settled permanently on the lake when Hortense purchased the château d'Arenenberg the following year.  Louise married the celebrated Napoleonic captain Denis-Charles Parquin in 1822, and her beautifully written memoirs of Hortense and the Imperial family were published a year after Louise's death, in 1836.

Inscribed on the mount Intérieur de mon petit Salon à Constance 1816.