French portrait painter. In 1746-1749 he traveled, at its own expense, in Italy. After his return to Paris he became a member of the painters and sculptors guild at Académie de Saint-Luc. Between 1759 and 1771 he regularly exhibited portraits of his contemporaries in the Paris Salon. He portrayed family members, scientists, writers, actors and musicians.
Voiriot was a highly successful portraitist who customarily included items relevant to the life of the sitter. In this case he portrayed M. Gilbert Desvoisins, his prominent patron, with the splendid lacquered bureau plat, the chinoiserie ink wells in ormolu mounts, as working at his papers.
This portrait represents a richly dressed lady with her bracelet which is set with brilliants and featuring a miniature of her husband.
Guillaume was born into a family of artists, the son of the painter and sculptor Jean Voiriot. He was a member of the Roman Academy of St Luke and of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris, where he held several positions. Voiriot developed his artistic career during the reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI and the revolutionary period. Especially gifted for portraiture, his most prominent works in the genre were dedicated to Parisian literati, scientists, politicians and artists.
The French poet Charles-Pierre Colardeau (1732-1776), whose early death cut short a promising career, is portrayed half-length in the foreground of this composition, seated in an armchair. The poet is dressed in a red smock and wears a short powdered wig gathered by a grey ribbon, in the style of the day. The figure spontaneously turns his head, holding in his left hand some sheets of paper from the manuscript Lettre d’H�loise à Ab�lard (Letter from Heloise to Abelard), his best and most well known poem written in 1758, an imitation in verse of the famous work of the same name written in 1716 by Alexander Pope that prefigures 18th-century pre-Romantic sensitivity.
Exhibited at the Parisian Salon of 1771, this work is a fine example of 18th-century French bourgeois portraiture and follows a model that was made popular by a number of painters, among which his famous compatriot Michel van Loo. Far from the affectedness of some portraits, Voiriot granted this work an intimate quality, rendering the figure in a natural way.
