Jean Joseph VAUDECHAMP (Rambervillers 1790 - Neuilly-sur-Seine 1866) Portrait of a woman Original canvas Signed and dated on the right "Vaudechamp 1831". 100 x 81 cm (Accidents) A former student of Girodet-Trioson and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Jean-Joseph Vaudechamp exhibited at the Salon for almost thirty years from 1817 to 1848, mainly painting portraits. From 1831 to 1839, he spent the winter months in the "French Quarter" of New Orleans, where he quickly became the fashionable portraitist of the city's bourgeoisie, from plantation owners to cotton and sugar merchants, eager to commemorate their social success by commissioning him to paint their effigies. His neoclassical style, tinged with romanticism, determined the beginnings of several painters in the region. As early as 1834, William Dunlap reported that Vaudechamp earned an astonishing $30,000 during his first three seasons in Louisiana. A monograph has recently been dedicated to him (William Keyse Rudolph, "Vaudechamp in New Orleans", Historic New Orleans Collection, 2007).