Miniature on vellum, after the beautiful portrait of Jean Pâris de Monmartel (1690-1766), painted by Maurice Quentin de La Tour in 1746.

Jean Paris de Monmartel was the youngest of the four brothers Pâris, financiers under Louis XIV then Louis XV. He carried many titles : Marquis de Brunoy, Comte de Sampigny, Baron de Dagouville, Comte de Châteaumeillant, d'Argenton and Veuil d'Argenson, Vicomte de la Motte Feuilly, Baron de Saint-Jeanvrin, Saligny and Marigny, Seigneur de Villers-sur-Mer, Châteauneuf, La Chétardie, Varenne, Lamotte-Glauville, Bourgeauville, Drubec, des Humières, Le Donjon, La Forest les Dureaux, Lamirande, Lachetardie, and other places.

Henri Bouchot in his book "la miniature Française"in 1907, reproduced the same miniature mounted at the time on a snuff box. Is this a different version? Is this the same work that was reassembled in a spindle because of a deterioration of the box?
The miniature was given at the time of Henri Bouchot to François Hubert Drouais son (portrait of a stranger).

It is more agreed today that only the father, Hubert Drouais, painted miniatures. But we know of no signed miniature of either one or the other.

Painter of the Menus Plaisirs, named in 1744 ordinary painter of King Louis XV and Madame de Pompadour, Drouais was, according to witnesses of the time, a remarkable miniature portraitist.

Our miniature, brilliantly executed, has a broad touch with blue highlights, very particular which inscribes it in a group of portraits in miniature (that we have or have had), all of the same hand, all painted on velum, all around 1750, all of a remarkable quality and all of the entourage of the members of the court of Versailles. (Family of Parseval,de Villegagnon, de La Gherche...)

We therefore retain the very probable attribution of Henri Bouchot to the Drouais, but rather to the father.

The miniature is reproduced on page 26 of Henri Bouchot's book.