François-Hubert Drouais

François-Hubert Drouais was a leading French portrait painter during the latter years of Louis XV's reign. His clientele included the French royal family and nobility, foreign aristocracy, fermiers-généraux, and the wealthier members of Parisian society and their favourites. But it was his increasing popularity at the French court that expanded his clientele and made his portraits a fashionable necessity. Drouais’s work was admired during his lifetime, and his popularity and clientele did not diminish from the occasional adverse judgement published in Salon reviews.
Drouais was apprenticed successively to his father Hubert Drouais, Donat Nonnotte, Charles-André van Loo, Charles-Joseph Natoire, and François Boucher. He was received into the Académie royale in 1758 with his morceaux des réception portraits of the celebrated sculptors Edme Bouchardon and Guillaume II Coustou. Both portraits were exhibited at the Salon of 1759 and received praise. Drouais attended the meetings of the Académie royale and, from 1755 until his death in 1775, exhibited regularly at the official Salons held in the Louvre in Paris.