Portrait of an officer of Dragoon Regiment No. 12 of the French army, half-length, in uniform, wearing the Order of Saint Louis

We are grateful to Edgar Munhall for confirming the attribution to Jean-Baptiste Greuze on the basis of photographs. He dates the work to an early phase of the artist’s career, between 1757 and 1765, given the close similarities to other portraits of that period, particularly in the rendering of the lace. On this, Greuze advised the young portraitist Joseph Ducreux: 'nempastés jamais vos dentelles ni vos gazes' (E. de Goncourt, L’art du dix-huitième siècle, I, Paris, 1880, p. 298, n.1). The present picture can be compared to other half-lengths by Greuze, such as the portraits of Louis Gougenot, abbé de Chezal-Benoît (Dijon, Musée des Beaux-Arts), Johann Georg Wille (Paris, Institut de France, Musée Jacquemart-André), which is signed and dated 1763, and George Gougenot de Croissy (Brussels, Musée des Beaux-Arts).
We are also grateful to Andrew Cormack for identifying the regiment and dating the uniform to circa 1760-70.