1727 -1775 · Court portrait, aristocratic childhood and elegance Louis XV

Precious silks, smiling faces, open-air children and intimate apparatus make François-Hubert Drouais the main portraitist at the court of Louis XV after Nattier.

François-Hubert Drouais was born in Paris in 1727 into a dynasty of portrait painters. His father Hubert Drouais, renowned for his miniatures, taught him the accuracy of resemblance and the precious finish. The young artist completed his training with Carle van Loo, Charles-Joseph Natoire and François Boucher. From these masters, he retained the breadth of the composition, the light color and the decorative elegance of rococo. Approved then received at the Royal Academy in 1758, Drouais exhibited regularly at the Salon from 1755. He gradually succeeded Jean-Marc Nattier as privileged portraitist at the court of Louis XV. The king, the royal family, Madame de Pompadour, Madame du Barry, the greats aristocrats, artists and members of the liberal professions pose for him. Drouais excels at reconciling pageantry and naturalness. In Madame de Pompadour to her embroidery craft, painted in 1763-1764, the monumental scale, the silk dress and the decor assert rank, while the embroidery craft, the books and the dog construct the image of a cultured woman in a living interior. His portraits of children are immensely successful. Young princes and boys in tricorns often appear with an animal or in a landscape, in a fashion that combines family status, spontaneity and pastoral imagination. Drouais observes satin, lace, fur and carnation, but it prevents the virtuosity of the materials from erasing the face. The variants and replicas produced with the workshop respond to a European clientele and the needs of dynastic representation. Died in Paris in 1775, he passed on the family tradition to his son Jean-Germain Drouais, future student of David. His work remains one of the most accomplished expressions of French portraiture on the eve of neoclassicism. His work remains one of the most accomplished expressions of French portraiture on the eve of neoclassicism. His work remains one of the most accomplished expressions of French portraiture on the eve of neoclassicism. His work remains one of the most accomplished expressions of French portraiture on the eve of neoclassicism. His work remains one of the most accomplished expressions of French portraiture on the eve of neoclassicism. His work remains one of the most accomplished expressions of French portraiture on the eve of neoclassicism. His work remains one of the most accomplished expressions of French portraiture on the eve of neoclassicism. His work remains one of the most accomplished expressions of French portraiture on the eve of neoclassicism. His work remains one of the most accomplished expressions of French portraiture on the eve of neoclassicism. His work remains one of the most accomplished expressions of

Drouais makes the pageantry welcoming: silk and rank impose distance, then a smile, a dog or a child's gesture immediately reduce it.