Description
Cabanel enjoyed a rapid rise to fame, winning a first-class medal and being appointed a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1855. He also became a professor of painting at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1863. This painting replicates a once-lost official portrait commissioned in 1865 for the apartments of Empress Eugénie in the Tuileries Palace. Scoffing critics of Napoleon III's regime dismissed the original work as "a portrait of a hotel manager."
In 2009, the full-length portrait was rediscovered in storage at the chateau of Compiegne.
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