JEAN-BAPTISTE REGNAULT (PARIS 1754-1829)

A precocious talent who displayed notable skill as a draftsman by the age of ten, Regnault was a major figure in the first generation of neoclassical history painters who came of age in the decade before the Revolution. As a boy he travelled to Canada and America (living for a time in Louisiana), and worked as a cabin boy for five years. On returning to Paris, he entered the studio of Ambroise-Marguerite Bardin, won a second prize at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1775, and took the Grand Prix the following year, entitling him to three years of study at the French Academy in Rome on a state scholarship. Having achieved success and acclaim in Rome for his earliest works, he returned to Paris and was admitted into the Académie Royale in 1782 and received as a full member in 1783 with The Education of Achilles (Louvre). Henceforth, he exhibited at almost every Salon until 1802. The recipient of lucrative public and state commissions throughout the Empire and Restoration, and the beneficiary of a shrewd marriage, Regnault was able to increasingly withdraw from his position as leader of the French School and his influence over developments in advanced painting, and devote himself to creating a large body of works that were not commissioned and perhaps never intended to be sold, especially suave and erotic mythologies such as The Toilet of Venus (1815; Chrysler Museum, Norfolk) and Cupid Asleep in the Arms of Psyche (1828; Art Institute of Chicago).

Principally a painter of historical, mythological and allegorical canvases of gigantic size, Regnault was also a gifted and sympathetic portraitist, occasionally portraying himself and his family, and usually on a modest scale. The present painting, presumably made in the late 1780s when the artist was in his mid-thirties, conveys his cheerful countenance and penetrating gaze. It is executed with the velvety and somewhat blurred modelling, soft brushwork and rich, luminous colors that make his paintings distinctive.