Portrait of Carle Vernet

Robert Lefèvre signed and dated this canvas 1804 and showed it at the Salon that year, a painter's portrait of a fellow painter. Carle Vernet, then about 46, is shown at his easel with his palette, his brushes and the long stick painters rested the working hand on. He was best known for horses, and for sharp drawings of fashionable Parisians.

His family painted across four generations. His father Joseph was the great painter of French seaports, his son Horace would become the painter of Napoleon's battles, and Horace's daughter married the painter Paul Delaroche. The portrait went on being shown. In 1830 it hung in an exhibition held for the benefit of those wounded in the July Revolution, and it was lent again to shows in 1846 and 1885. It reached the Louvre in 1890 as a bequest from Horace-Paul Delaroche, a descendant of the sitter.