François Dumont

Dumont received his first art lessons from the sculptor Mathis in Lunéville and later on from Girardet in Nancy. He travelled to Paris when he was 17 years old, and soon became a successful miniature painter. From 1786 onwards he was court painter to Marie Antoinette. He spent some time in Rome in 1786 and became a member of the Paris Académie Royale in 1788. He married Nicole Vestier, daughter of the miniature painter Antoine Vestier, in 1789 and one year later was given an apartment in the Louvre by Louis XVI. Although he was connected with the upper levels of the aristocracy in the ancien régime, Dumont was not arrested until September 1793, although he was later released. He exhibited in the Salon from 1789 to 1831. He painted not only miniatures, but also portraits in oils. Supposedly he did not give lessons, but the miniature painters Tony Dumont and Louis Alexandre are recorded as his pupils in the Livrets of the Salon.