Cupid holding his arrow, attributed to Louis Marie Sicard known as Sicardi (1743–1825)

Attributed to Louis Marie SICARD known as SICARDI
(Avignon, 1743 – Paris, 1825)

Cupid holding his arrow

Oil on oval canvas
33 x 26.5 cm
Around 1800

Louis Marie Sicard is the son of the Toulouse painter Jean-Pierre Antoine Sicard (1719-1796). Born in Avignon on August 2, 1743, Louis-Marie Sicard would become especially renowned for his art of miniatures. However, he also produced a good number of easel paintings, almost exclusively portraits, including a cherub similar to ours and dated 1797. Of course, a student of his father, he then entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Bordeaux, where he became a member and professor in 1771. Shortly after, leaving his position vacant in Bordeaux, Louis-Marie went to Paris, probably called by the Maison du Roi, a rare thing for an artist who was neither a member of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture nor of the Académie de Saint-Luc. He then produced several miniature portraits of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, one of which, dated 1785, is currently in the Louvre. The great men of the court would also subsequently pass under his brushes. A discreet painter, Sicardi seems to have gone through the revolutionary period without his physical integrity being threatened despite his connections with the royal family. However, we can note a passage to London in 1789, where he stipulated in one of his letters that he had lost all his fortune. Once the horrors of History had passed, he was made painter of the King's cabinet during the Restoration. Sicardi exhibited at the Paris Salon from 1791 to 1819. The artist died on July 18, 1825.