François Guérin

However, the work of the Academie de Saint-Luc was so far from second rate that following a successful exhibition in 1777, the Royal Academy took offence, and with the backing of the monarchy, issued an edict in March 1776 abolishing “guilds, brotherhoods, and communities of arts and crafts”, forcing the Academie de Saint-Luc to close. Guérin had, however, been accepted into the more prestigious academy by 1761. Guérin's chief principal works were bust portraits and conversation pieces - small informal paintings of groups or couples shown within a domestic setting.

The recorded working language is French. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are portrait. Places of work recorded in the authority are Paris and Rome. Work by François Guérin is recorded in the collections of Albertina, Hermitage Museum, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Waddesdon Manor and Musée des Beaux-Arts de Quimper.

Guérin is known to have had a son Thomas-François, but little more is reliably known. A 1748 portrait of Madame de Pompadour with her daughter indicates that he was active at Versailles in the mid 18th century. However, a second portrait, painted in the late 1760s, once thought to be Pompadour in discussion with the Duc de Choiseul, is now thought to be of two anonymous sitters due to the work recording precisely the furnishings which were too unfashionable for a salon of either Choiseul or Pompadour.