François-Xavier Fabre

François-Xavier Fabre trained under Jacques-Louis David, the leading painter of Revolutionary France, and won the Prix de Rome in 1787. When the Revolution turned dangerous he settled in Florence, joined the academy there, and made a comfortable living painting portraits of the wealthy.

In Florence he entered one of the era's most talked-about households. The poet and dramatist Vittorio Alfieri lived with Louise of Stolberg, Countess of Albany, the estranged wife of the exiled Stuart pretender to the British throne. Fabre grew close to the couple, and after Alfieri died in 1803 he stayed at the Countess's side for the rest of her life. When she died in 1824 she left him her fortune and her collection.

Fabre carried that windfall home to Montpellier, the southern French city where he was born. He used it to set up a drawing school and to give the town his own paintings, his books, and the works he had inherited. That gift became the Musée Fabre, which opened in 1825 and still carries his name. He went on directing it and adding to it until his death in 1837.