Portrait Of Charlotte Nicaty And Her Pug - Oil On Canvas By Steudlin, Switzerland, 1751

Large portrait of Charlotte Nicaty née Fornier, with her pug
at the age of 24
Painted by Steudlin
Switzerland, 1751
Oil on canvas & original stretcher
Beautiful original frame, in gilded wood and decorated corners in the Bernese style
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100 x 84 cm [stretcher]
107 x 91 cm [frame]
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Very good general condition. The frame is a little warped (see photo 8).
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The brass plaque attached to the frame bears the inscription:
Marquise Raimonda de Pizzera / Duchess of Santo Rossa / 1738-1788
It seems that this plaque is fanciful, and that there is every reason to believe rather the handwritten indication on the back of the canvas, probably in the painter's own hand:
Charlotte Nicaty, / née Fornier, aged 24, / painted by Steudlin / 1751.

Little is known of Steudlin's biography. He was probably an itinerant German painter, but it seems that he settled in Geneva around 1750. He is cited as a "Geneva portrait painter" as a master of Christian Stöcklin (Geneva 1741, Frankfurt 1795) in a Künstler-Lexicon.
Nyon Castle holds in its collections the presumed portraits of Adam Veret (1700-1761) and his wife Marie-Marguerite née L'Etang (1701-1766), painted by Steudlin in 1751 - the same year as our painting.
The museum states that Steudlin produced other portraits in Morges in 1750, now in a private collection.
The fact that Steudlin was active in the Lake Geneva region in the mid-18th century is confirmed by the genealogical data that can be collected on Charlotte Fornier: probably descended from Languedoc refugees in Neuchâtel, she married Abram David Nicaty in Moudon on April 29, 1746, born in the same town on April 26, 1726.