As a young painter trained at the Academy in Paris in the post-Revolution years, Vanderlyn made a living both drawing and painting portraits of the American community in France. In this exquisitely wrought Neoclassical portrait—comparable to those of the young Ingres at this time—Vanderlyn deliberately contrasted the formality and angularity of Daniel Strobel, Jr., an American diplomat in France, with the curvilinear forms and more direct appeal that characterize the portrait of his wife Anna and son George (17.134.3).

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