The picture is a good example of a formal portrait executed in the final years of the Ancien Regime.  The artist who had been particularly favoured by Royal patronage, and painted in a remarkably simple style which was to become fashionable in the 1760s and 1770s.  This was a self-conscious reaction against the more elaborate formal qualities of the work of Rigaud and Largillierre (qq.v.). The sitter is now better known for his poetry than for his political career.

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