Bouguereau’s portraits were often of his friends and colleagues avoiding the rhetoric of his religious and historic pictures. The sitter here was closely involved with the artist in the building and decoration of a chapel in the cathedral of La Rochelle. The style adopted is one of an academic realism often favoured by French painters who were not specialist portraitists (see also Henner). There is no specific model for this picture but the artist harks back to the realism of Jacques-Louis David.

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