The dancer and playwriter Jean-Etienne Despréaux (1748-1820) married the celebrated dancer Marie-Madeleine Guimard (1743-1816) in 1787.Mademoiselle Guimard began her career as a dancer at the Comédie-Française in 1759 and three years later at the Opéra. She quickly became the most fashionable and renowned dancer in Paris and soon the mistress of the Duc de Soubise. In 1769 or 1770 Mademoiselle Guimard commissioned Fragonard to decorate her new house in the rue de la Chaussée d'Antin which had been designed for her by Ledoux on the orders of the Maréchal de Soubise. Fragonard painted four large panels and a portrait which David had to complete after she and the artist went their seperate ways. The latter picture was offered at Christie's, London, 13 December 1991, lot 62, illustrated. Fragonard painted Mademoiselle Guimard a further time in one of the Figures de Fantaisie, now in the Louvre. A marble bust by Gaetano Merchi dated 1779 is in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, P. Rosenberg, Fragonard, exhib. cat., Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, 1992, no. 125, illustrated and fig. 1.
By 1786 Marie-Madeleine Guimard was bankrupt and the next year she married Jean-Etienne Despréaux. Elizabeth Vigée-Le Brun described her in her memoirs: 'sa dancs n'était qu'une esquisse, elle ne faisait que des petits pas, mais avec des mouvements si gracieux, que le public la préférait à toute autre danseuse; elle était petite, mince, très bien faite quoique laide, elle avait les traits si fins qu'à l'âge de quarante-cinq ans elle ne semblait sur la scène n'en avoir pas plus de quinze'. She was known to be very thin and was described by Sophie Arnould when dancing with Vestris and Dauberval as 'le trio à deux chiens se diputant un os'.
Despréaux started as a dancer but soon became maître des ballets at the French court: however, a foot injury forced him to stop dancing in 1781. He continued to compose ballets and wrote plays. During the Revolution he was an administrator at the Opéra and was later in charge of organizing public celebrations. After the Empire Despréaux held other official posts at Court.