Frédéric Dubois (c. 1760 – c. 1822) was a French miniature painter and painter.[1]
Biography
Dubois was born c. 1760 and, according some sources,[2] was a pupil of Johann Heinrich Schröder [de] (1757 - 1812) and debuted as pastellist in the “Salon (Paris) de la Correspondance” of the 1780 with the portraits of Charles Juste de Beauvau, Prince of Craon and Comte Mimerel. His first miniatures can be dated to the mid-80s of the 18th century. He was active in Paris until 1804 where he was the court painter of Louis Joseph, Prince of Condé and lived in rue Neuve des Petits Champs, 414 rue Neuve Saint Marc, 549 rue de Grammont, 27 place des Victoires. In the following years he worked in Saint Petersburg. There, as most sources state, he stayed until 1818 and in 1813 he was granted membership of Saint Petersburg Imperial Academy of Arts.[3] In 1819–1820, he was exhibiting in different London locations but above all in Royal Academy. In England he lived in London, 22 Vine Street and then in 9 Panton street near Leicester Square an area of the city known as an entertainment venue preferred by foreigners and where the great portrait painter Joshua Reynolds lived until 1792. Probably he died in c. 1822. During his stay in Saint Petersburg, very appreciated by the court of Alexander I of Russia, the artist taught at the Imperial Academy of Arts and painted a great number of portraits of royalties and aristocrats. He also portrayed French expatriates living in Russia's capital. His works of this period can be viewed in Moscow Pushkin Museum and Tretyakov Gallery, in Saint Petersburg Hermitage Museum and other Russian museum collections.[4] Frederic Dubois not only painted in miniature, as can be seen in the oil portraits of two sisters from the Poilevé de la Guerinais Breton family in Rennes[5] or in the portrait of a scientist with the Legion of Honor,[6] but was also a printmaker and produced royalist caricatures now in the British Museum.[7]
Artwork
A lady wearing a white dress with a blue shawl and holding a miniature in her hand, circa 1790
His miniature are fresh and well drawn, very fine painted in small, crossed, narrow strokes, the general direction of which is from the upper right to the lower left. The backgrounds are usually treated in rather dark gouache, except in certain miniature towards the end of his career, when he executes the backgrounds in parallel hatchings entirely in the English style. In his best works he obtains soft chiaroscuro effects very close to Leonardo's nuanced. This technique allows him to give extreme sweetness to the sitters portrayed always represented in a psychological dimension of great depth and introspection. Some painters named Dubois worked at the end of the 18th century and the exact attribution of miniatures signed with this surname alone can sometimes be uncertain. In every case, among the artists with surname "Dubois" only Nicolas Dubois (1746 - 1826) was a miniature painter summoned by Louis XVI with a successful career in Spain and fortunately, the works signed by Frederic Dubois are, for the most part, marked "F. Dubois", which helps to avoid confusion even if some others are signed simply "Dubois" or "F. D."[8]
Works
Portrait of a Woman, 1793/94 (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
^"Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum" Ed. Stephens, Frederic George and Mary Dorothy
^"Les peintres en miniature", Nathalie Lemoine Bouchard, Les Editions de l'Amateur, Paris, 2008
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