A painting by Antoine Callet acquired by The Huntington

20/8/24 - Acquisition - San Marino, The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens - In 1778, the painter Antoine Callet was commissioned to paint a portrait of the French king Louis XVI for the Hôtel de la Guerre in Versailles. As Marie-Catherine Sahut writes, this commission gave him "a lasting reputation in the portrait genre, due to the quality of the model [...] and the unquestionable success of the work [1]’, the Château de Versailles acquired another version of this work, of which it already kept a sample (see news item of 7/11/16).

It is undoubtedly one of the artist’s masterpieces in this field that The Huntington, in San Marino, Los Angeles County, has bought from the Coatalem gallery in Paris, two years after the acquisition from the same dealer of another late…