A student of Joseph-Benoît Suvée and Jacques-Louis David, Nanine Vallain participated in the Exposition de la Jeunesse in Paris in 1785, 1787 and 1788. In 1793, she joined the Commune générale des arts, a group opposed to the Académie royale. Vallain exhibited several times at the Salon du Louvre, between 1793 and 1810, when it started accepting submissions from women. A committed revolutionary, she painted a number of history paintings and allegorical scenes, as well as portraits like the present work, among them her Self-Portrait, or Allegory of Liberty, from 1794, and the Portrait of a woman holding a lamb from 1788, respectively in the Musée de la Révolution française in Vizille (inv. MRF D1966) and the Musée Cognacq-Jay, Paris (inv. 2010.1; for both, see Peintres femmes. Naissance d’un combat 1780-1830, exhib. cat., Paris, Musée du Luxembourg, 2021, nos. 64, 119, ill.).