Saint Paul the Hermit

The pupil of his famous uncle, Jean Jouvenet, the leading religious painter in the capital, Jean Restout the Younger was approved (agréé) by the Academie Royale in 1717 and was received (reçu) in 1720, the year in which he married Marie-Anne Hallé, daughter of the painter Claude-Guy Hallé. Unlike most history painters of his time, Restout did not travel to Italy, instead training with Jouvenet, and perhaps also with Nicolas de Largillière, and, once established in the 1720s, he had a studio of assistants and pupils. He occasionally attended the drawing school of the Académie, where from 1730 he was professor of drawing, in which capacity he wrote his Essai sur les principes de la peinture. The influence of his family background probably led Restout to specialize in religious paintings, and most of his commissions came from monastic houses and churches, continuing the restrained French version of the Counter-Reformation style that had been developed by his uncle, tempering it with keen observation.