Henri-François RIESENER (Paris 1767-1828 Paris) Portrait of a young lady in a scarlet dress, one shoulder covered with a shawl. Oil on canvas. Signed lower right. 65 x 54 cm. Repainting, restorations. Presented in a fine Empire/Restauration period frame, with an oval view, decorated with palmettes and laurel spandrels. Our delicate female portrait, with its fine psychology, is a highly characteristic example of the mature period of the artist, who returned to France in 1822 after a stay in the Russian Empire. Son of the famous court cabinetmaker Jean-Henri Riesener, he first trained as a miniaturist with Antoine Vestier, then studied in the workshops of François-André Vincent and, above all, Jacques-Louis David, whose neoclassical style he adopted. He made his debut at the Salon of 1793, but interrupted his career for around five years to serve in the army during the revolutionary wars. On his return, he established himself as a portraitist and miniaturist, becoming one of the most sought-after painters in the entourage of power under the Consulate and Empire. He painted portraits of Napoleon I, Joséphine de Beauharnais (full-length portrait, 1806) and many other dignitaries and artists of the period. After the fall of the Empire, the scarcity of commissions led him to leave France in 1815 for Russia, where he worked for several years in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Warsaw, becoming a popular portraitist of the nobility and the court of Tsar Alexander I of Russia. Returning to France around 1822, he devoted more time to teaching and passing on his art: he trained his son Léon Riesener and played a decisive role in the early career of his nephew Eugène Delacroix, whom he guided to the studio of Pierre-Narcisse Guérin. Riesener died in Paris in 1828, leaving behind the memory of an elegant portraitist representative of pre-romantic neoclassicism. Expert: Mr. Pierre-Antoine MARTENET 06 08 17 28 49 pam@quirinal.fr