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as the present fatigue and disillusionment such a in a gouache on vellum study in Fribourg, the por-
man might feel by 1794 is eloquently transcribed trait of Charles-Henri, comte d’Estaing, preserved in an
across his careworn face in every wrinkle, sag and engraving by Charles Gaucher, and a portrait of
grizzled lock that Sablet has taken such pains to cap- Jacques Sablet (Lausanne, Musée Cantonal des Beaux-
ture. The portrait in fact closely evokes the ‘warts Arts), painted just before his departure for Italy in
and all’ style of Roman Republican portraiture, 1775.3 In 1791 François finally left France to join
examples of which Sablet had no doubt seen during Jacques in Rome. During this brief two year period
his brief period in Rome between 1791 and 1793. François concentrated mainly on producing land-
Another possibility is that the sitter was an officer of scapes, and views of Roman ruins, several of which
the local government at the Municipalité or at the were later engraved by Francisco and Pietro
Administration des Sections in the revolutionary gov- Piranesi.4 He also made studies of the various local
ernment of the Convention. costumes of the Campagna.5

François Sablet was an ardent supporter of the After he was obliged to leave Rome with the rest of
Revolution, as was his brother Jacques. In February the French community, François became a member
of 1793, just days after France declared war on of the Revolutionary Commune des Arts and subse-
Britain, Holland and Spain, the brothers were forced quently produced several portraits of Revolutionary
to leave Rome, along with the rest of the French figures and icons including Joseph-Agricol Viala,
community residing there.The French architect Béat William Tell and Lycurgus, all of which were engraved
de Hennezel wrote: ‘les Sablet son partis par l’ordre du by Pierre-Michel Alix.6 After the turn of the centu-
gouvernement pour leur democratie & imprudences’.2 The ry, Francois spent most of his career in Nomandy. In
Sablets returned to France via Lausanne finally 1805 he established himself in Nantes, producing
reaching Paris by October of 1793. The following small-scale likenesses of local notables, and several
year François was received as a member of the members of the Peccot and Crucy families, often
Revolutionary Commune des Arts, and exhibited in the rendered with brutal accuracy. Most of these por-
Concours de l’an III (1794) though it not known traits are conserved in the Musée Dobrée, Nantes. In
whether he included the present portrait. 1812, François decorated the Bourse in Nantes with
six large grisailles depicting the Visite de Napoléon à
Among François’s Sablet’s earlier portraits are those Nantes en 1808 that have since been sold in the
of Charles de Bourbon, Comte d’Artois, as Colonel General United States, though the preparatory studies remain
of the Swiss and Grison Guards (1774), which survives in the Musée Dobrée.

2. Les voyages en Italie de Béat de Hennezel, architecte 1791-1796: deux cents paysages, exhib. cat., Geneva, Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, 1990, p. 176.
3. A. Van de Sandt, Les frères Sablet, exhib. cat., Nantes, Musée Départmentaux de Loire-Atlantique, Lausanne, Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts de
Lausanne, and Rome, Musée de Rome Palazzo Braschi, 1985, p. 121, no. 99 ; p.154, no. 168; and p. 137, no. 133, all illus.
4.Van de Sandt, op. cit., p..155, nos 169 and 171
5. Ibid, pp.143-144, nos. 143-144, illus.
6. Ibid, pp.158-160, nos. 173-175, all illus.

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