Born at Fontainebleau, the son of the sculptor and engraver Jean Gobert II (1627-c.1681), Pierre Gobert learnt to paint in his father’s studio and began to work for the court at a very young age. He spent most of his time in Paris and became a member of the Académie in 1701. His reputation as Louis XIV court’s portraitist is illustrated by the substantial collection at Versailles, including portraits of the Duchess of Maine, Anne-Lucie de la Mothe-Houdancourt and the Duchess of Burgundy. Amongst his numerous male portraits is a portrait of Louis XV as a boy. Gobert exhibited at the Salon in 1704 and 1737. From 1707-9 the artist settled in Lunéville working for the court of Lorraine where he painted an impressive group of seventy portraits, among them that of Léopold, Duke of Lorraine and his wife Elizabeth-Charlotte d’Orleans.

This portrait dating from the 1720s is a version of one in the State Museum of Foreign Art of Latvia at Riga, convincingly there identified as Charlotte Aglaé d'Orléans, Mademoiselle de Valois and Duchess of Modena (1700-1761). Charlotte Aglaé was the third daughter of Philippe II, Duke of Orléans and Françoise-Marie de Bourbon. In 1720 she married Prince Francesco d'Este, the future Francesco III, Duke of Modena, with whom she had ten children. She appears slightly younger as ‘Hebe’ in a portrait of similar design in the Palace of Versailles dated c. 1720.

The Royal Collection version was first listed at St James’s Palace in 1819 where it is described as ‘Duchess of Bourbon’ with an annotation in pencil in a later hand ‘Mlle de Clarmont’. At Hampton Court in 1861 (Queen’s Guard Chamber no 984) this latter identification is repeated. Marie-Anne de Bourbon, called Mademoiselle de Clermont (1697-1741), was the fifth child of Louis III, Prince of Condé; in 1719 she secretly married Louis, duc de Joyeuse, who was killed in 1724 in an hunting accident. This tragic romance provided the subject of Stéphanie Félicité de Genlis’s Mademoiselle de Clermont of 1802. This later fame might have encouraged the traditional identification, which though reasonable in era is unsupported by any other evidence.