Robert Levrac-Tournières (Caen 1667-1752)

A pupil of Bon de Boullongne, Robert Levrac-Tournières married Françoise Lemoyne (mother of the painter François Lemoyne) in 1693. He was agréé in 1701 and received into the Académie, as a portraitist in 1702, and later as a history painter in 1716. "Encouraged by the auspicious success of his small pictures, Tournières abandoned larger compositions and devoted his career to painting small portrait historiés or sujets de caprice in the manner of Schalken or Gerard Dou. His aim was to imitate their beautiful colors, their seductive reflections and this precious fini which must be appreciated," wrote Dézallier d'Argenville in 1762.

Tournières's charming self-portrait with his friend and patron Pierre de la Roche illustrates just the sort of "small portrait histories" to which Dézallier d'Argenville referred. Precise, miniaturist, and executed with the 'precious finish' that very successfully imitates the paintings of Godfried Schalken and other 17th-century Dutch 'little masters', the picture was exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1704 and passed through several of the greatest 18th-century art collections in Paris, including that of the Prince de Conti and Jean-Baptiste de Montullé. A lively and informal intimacy characterizes the double portrait, which was reproduced in a mezzotint by Isaac Sarrabat in 1703.