Joseph Aved

Before he was a fashionable Paris portraitist, Jacques-André-Joseph Aved was a teenager hawking his talent at Dutch country fairs. Orphaned young and raised in Amsterdam by an uncle, he learned to draw quick likenesses for whoever would pay, which earned him the nickname Camelot, roughly 'the peddler'.

He carried that Dutch training back to Paris, where a plain, honest way of painting faces set him apart from the sugary court style. In 1734 he became a full member of the Royal Academy. His closest friend was the still-life painter Jean-Siméon Chardin, and many believe Aved is the reason Chardin tried his hand at portraits at all.

Chardin returned the compliment by painting Aved at work, a canvas now known as The Alchemist. Aved himself spent his fortune on pictures, mostly Dutch, and the great collection was auctioned off in 1766, the year he died.