DEDREUX, Alfred

Alfred Dedreux (also spelt Alfred de Dreux), French painter and draughtsman. His father was the architect Pierre-Anne Dedreux (1788-1849); Alfred’s sister, Louise-Marie Becq de Fouquières (1825-92), was also an artist. His uncle, Pierre-Joseph Dedreux-Dorcy (1789-1874), a painter and intimate friend of Géricault, took Dedreux frequently to the atelier of Géricault whose choice of subjects, especially horses, had a lasting influence on him. During the 1820s he studied with Léon Cogniet (1794-1880), although his early style was more influenced by the work of Stubbs, Morland, Constable and Landseer, exposure to which probably came through Géricault and the painter Eugène Lami who lived in London in the mid-1820s.

Following the Revolution in 1848, the French royal family emigrated to England where Dedreux frequently visited them, painting many equestrian portraits of the exiled King Louis-Philippe and his sons. He returned to Grance and was commissioned to paint a portrait of Napoleon III in 1859 (Musée de l’Armée, Paris). A dispute arose over his equestrian portrait and in March 1860 he was killed in a duel by Comte Fleury, Napoleon’s principal aide-de-camp.