VINCENT, François-André
French painter and draughtsman. He was one of the principal innovators in French art of the 1770s and 1780s, in the field of both Neoclassical subjects and themes from national history. After studying with Joseph-Marie Vien in Paris Vincent had won the much-coveted Prix de Rome in 1768, remaining as a pupil in the École Royale des Éleves Protégés until July 1771 when he was installed as a pensionnaire in the Palais Mancini, Rome. During his Roman sojourn Vincent drew and painted a large number of portraits, both of his fellow students and Italian aristocrats (such as Monseigneur Ruffo in 1775). This portrait dates from a time in which Vincent’s portraits are particularly close to Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s, largely due to the latter’s presence in Rome and Naples from December 1773 to June 1774.
Despite the fact that he worked in a variety of styles, his sense of purpose appears to have been coherent at a time of profound change. His stylistic sources lay in the art of Classical antiquity and such masters as Raphael, the great Bolognese painters of the 17th century and Charles Le Brun; yet he also studied reality in a quasi-documentary way. His work, too often confused with that of Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Jacques-Louis David or Louis-Léopold Boilly, is of a high standard, even though the completed paintings do not always uphold the promise of energy of his drawings and oil sketches.
He married in 1800 Adelaide Labille-Guiard, a well-known woman painter of the period.
