Portrait of a man, half-length

Founder of a dynasty of painters, Hubert Drouais’s fame would eventually be eclipsed by that of his son, the celebrated portraitist and genre painter, François-Hubert Drouais (1727-1775) and his grandson, the neoclassical History painter, Jean-Germain Drouais (1763-1788), but he was one of the most successful portrait painters of his era. He began his artistic training in Rouen and moved to Paris in 1717, where he entered the studio of François de Troy. Besides painting portraits in oil and pastel, Drouais also took up miniature painting to great acclaim.

For his acceptance into the Académie Royale in 1730, he submitted two large portraits, of the painter Joseph Christophe (Paris, Versailles) and the sculptor Robert Le Lorrain (Paris, Musée du Louvre). The present portrait of an unknown sitter certainly dates to the same moment and, while more informal in presentation, displays the identical handling of flesh, hair and drapery as is found in Drouais’s celebrated painting of Le Lorrain.