Portrait of Frédéric Villot

This portrait is somewhat exceptional, although not totally isolated, in the work of Delacroix. The sitter is Fréderic Villot, a friend of the artist, himself an engraver and curator at the Louvre in Paris. The handling of the painting - colour scheme, smooth chiaroscuro transition - should be seen as somewhat restrained, almost classical close to official portraits of high-ranking personalities painted a generation earlier by Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830) in England. Villot's posture is calm, only the eyes and their intense expression bespeak a Romantic mentality.