French painter. After seeing Vestier's Ascension in the principal church of Avallon, a local notable, Philippe-Louis de Chastellux (1726-1787), funded the painter's journey to Paris, where he entered the studio of Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre. He was also taught the technique of enamelGLOSSARYColoured glass in powder form and sometimes bound with oil, which is bonded to a metal surface or plaque by firing. painting by his future father-in-law, Antoine Reverand (d. before 1764), and he worked in Paris as a painter of portraitGLOSSARYThe Roman portrait bust survived in the form of life-sized reliquaries of saints, but it was in 15th century Florence that the individual features and character of a contemporary sitter were accurately recorded by sculptors such as Donatello, Desiderio da Settignano, Mino da Fiesole and the Rossellino. A similar degree of realism occurs in 15th century tomb sculpture. The equestrian portrait, based on antique statues such as the Marcus Aurelius monument (Rome, Campidoglio), was revived in the 14th century. Two examples in fresco are Simone Martini's Guidoriccio (c. 1328; Siena, Palazzo Pubblico) and the posthumous portrait of Sir John Hawkwood (1436; Florence, Cathedral) by Uccello, which gives the illusion of a 3-dimensional statue seen from below. The Venetian Republic ordered imposing monuments from Donatello (1447; Gattarnelata, Padua) and Verrocchio (14799; Colleoni, Venice), whilst other statesmen ordered their own images to be erected in public places, directly relating themselves to the military heroes of ancient Rome. Another form of political portraiture derived from antiquity was the commemorative portrait medal designed by artists such as Pisanello. The carved or painted profile portrait became popular in the 1450s. The realism of the clear, flattened image, painted under the influence of Flemish examples by the Pollaiuolo brothers, Piero della Francesca and Botticelli, was superseded by the three-quarter and frontal portrait, psychologically more complex, such as Leonardo's enigmatic Mona Lisa (Paris, Louvre) with her momentary smile or Andrea del Sarto's arresting Portrait of a Man (London, National Gallery). The 16th century portrait became generalized, Lotto's Andrea Odoni (1527; Royal Collection) being an idealized concept of a collector rather than an individual. Group portraits, decorating whole rooms, include the narrative scenes of the Gonzaga court painted by Mantegna (completed 1474; Mantua, Palazzo Ducale) and the elaborate schemes commissioned by the Farnese family in Rome from Vasari (1546; Palazzo della Cancelleria) and Salviati (after 1553; Palazzo Farnese). Portraits were also incorporated into religious narratives, as in Ghirlandaio's fresco cycle painted for Giovanni Tornabuoni in S. Maria Novella, Florence (1486-90). miniatures in enamels. He gained few commissions until after 1766, however, when he became the painter of the powerful d'Hozier family. In 1774 he exhibited at the SalonGLOSSARYIn the French language of the 18th and 19th centuries it designated an actual exhibition space, as well as the academic art exhibitions staged in the Salon d'Apollon of the Louvre since 1667. From 1737, the exhibitions took place biennially and, after the French Revolution, annually in the Salon Carré of the Louvre in Paris. Towards the end of the 19th century the official Salon jury was dissolved in order to make way for a committee of state-approved artists, i.e. former Salon members, who created the highly influential Société des Artistes Français. of the Académie de St Luc, and in 1776 he went to London, where he probably knew Philippe-Jacques de Loutherbourg and possibly Thomas Gainsborough.
He showed his work at the Salon de la Correspondance, Paris, before being admitted (agréé) to the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1785, when a portrait of the painter Gabriel François Doyen, was his morceau de réception. In 1786 he became 'peintre du roi.'
Like many artists, he was housed in the Louvre before the Revolution and was the neighbour of the painter Jacques-Louis David. He was a successful society portraitist.
