The Rest on the Flight into Egypt

Like many French artists of his day, Leprince, a pupil of Boucher, was influenced by the masters of Dutch seventeenth-century painting, which was hugely popular in France it the time. His most important commission, and that for which he is most celebrated today, was for a series of forty paitnings for the Winter Palace, an appointment given to him by the Tsarina Elizabeth of Russia during his stay there from 1757-62. Tsar Peter III continued this Imperial patronage, which resulted in a considerable body of work completed during travels throughout the country, that became the basis for the eighteenth-century taste for Russeries.