Profile Of An Ancient Woman By Jean Baptiste Frenet

Antique-style woman's face in profile facing left, drawn in black chalk on paper. Signed lower right with the stamp of Jean Baptiste Frenet (1814-1889), the drawing is framed in a pitch pine frame with blackened wood fillets. Without the frame, the drawing measures 24.4x19.3 cm. Jean Baptiste Frenet was born in Lyon to a silk fabric manufacturer. After initial training at the Lyon School of Fine Arts, he went to Paris to study under Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres alongside the Flandrin brothers. He left for Italy at his own expense with Louis Janmot and Claudius Lavergne to join their masters, who had been appointed director of the Villa Medici. A devout Catholic, he returned to Lyon where he devoted himself primarily to religious painting. The problems of deterioration of his fresco project in the Basilica of Saint Martin d'Ainay and its unfavorable reception at Parisian salons led him to devote himself to politics and photography, of which he was one of the pioneers.