François-Hubert Drouais (1727–1775), Boy with a Sketchbook
, Black, white, and red chalk, Purchased on the Sunny Crawford von Bülow Fund 1978
, 1992.35
The portraitist François-Hubert was the best known of three generations of artists bearing the Drouais name. His success began with the Salon of 1755, and immediately thereafter he found favor at court with his double portrait of the infant sons of the dauphin, the future Louis XVI and Louis XVIII. The subject of a boy carrying a portfolio occurs several times in his oeuvre, and it has been proposed that they are depictions of the artist's son. Since some of these works are signed and dated 1760, this theory does not seem likely, as Drouais married only two years earlier.