Le Parisien

This urbane gentleman with his hair feathered over his forehead in the Brutus style is fashionably dressed and has a benign countenance. Deftly drawn in pastel on paper around 1805, the portrait is housed in the original giltwood frame with decorative borders. It is backed with the artist’s Parisian trade label – ‘Langlois de Sézanne / Artiste-Peintre des Généreux, rue / Geofroy-Langevin, près la rue / St. Avoie, n° 7 / A Paris’.

The frame has a couple of small losses to the inner border; the trade label has darkened with age and has some rubbing.

Born in Sézanne in 1757, Claude-Louis Langlois initially worked in the Sens region north of Paris. He exhibited in the Paris Salons from 1806 and later at the Royal Academy in London.