Although the painting suggests the intimacy of the sitter’s chambers, the marquise de Caumont La Force wears lavish but conservative court dress. In 1767, the year she sat for this portrait, the marquise was officially presented at the court of French king Louis XV. This formal introduction to the royal court may have been the occasion her being recorded by the fashionable court portraitist, François-Hubert Drouais. Drouais depicts the marquise at her tambour frame, an embroidery technique in which a chain stitch is worked with a tiny wooden-handled hook, rather than with a needle, on fabric drawn taut in a frame. François-Hubert Drouais was a French painter and Jean-Germain Drouais's father. He specialized in portraits, some of which include Louis XV's last two mistresses, Madame de Pompadour and Madame du Barry respectively. He even painted the young Marie Antoinette. (http://www.alaintruong.com/archives/2017/03/19/35066117.html)