In accepting portrait commissions Girodet had not hesitated to reject those sitters who did not "show any defined psychological quality", as he considered the depiction of the sitter's character the artist's primary aim. To achieve the most accurate portrayal of character, the artist must "eliminate all traces of affectation, [and be] as direct and as simple as possible". This ideal was not uncompromising, however, and while he was anxious that his portraits should be honest and penetrating, he advised others to avoid the depiction of strong emotions or vices which could disfigure and to stress their sitters virtues. Neither did he rule out flattery, in his words, a successful portrait painter should "be an obliging liar in attenuating a defect and, without hiding the simple truth, to alleviate ugliness and embellish beauty ....[a portrait must be] always true, but flattering; as it is, but embellished".

     Our portrait shares some similarities in compositional form with another of Queen Hortense by Francois Gord, now hanging at Malmaison. In both paintings the sitter's body is turned to the left while she looks straight at the viewer, and in both paintings there is a restricted view of a landscape to the right. Gerard's composition is altogether more conventional, however, the Queen being seated before a curtain while here she is apparently placed in a deeply shadowed cave. Girodet did not need to flatter Hortense, whose beauty and charm are attested to not only in other surviving contemporary portraits but also in the descriptions of those who knew her. What Girodet has noticed and managed to capture here with exquisite subtlety, is a hint of melancholy, hardly surprising bearing in mind her bitterness at being forced into an unwelcome marriage with an abusive boor. Only twenty-two years old, she had experienced imprisonment during the Revolution, the execution of her father, years of living in uncertain poverty before her mother's second marriage and the jealousy of her husband's sisters. Ironically, although she enjoyed a high position at the heart of the Empire she did not find real happiness until after Napoleon's downfall, when she retired to the beautiful Chateau of Arenenberg on the shores of lake Constance, the gift of her cousin, Stephanie, Grand Duchess of Baden. A portrait of her husband, Louis, signed and dated 1805, is in the collection of the Earl of Roseberry at Dalmeny House, near Edinburgh, and was probably painted contemporaneously with our picture. A second, studio version (dated 1813) of this composition in which Hortense wears a green dress, is on loan at Malmaison from the Louvre.