Portrait of the family Villers.

This lovely family portrait was painted in 1790 by a Bruges artist who lived and worked in Paris in the turbulent years after the French Revolution. The family Villers is in every way representative of an entire social class in revolutionary France the character of which is perfectly conveyed in this portrait. The central theme of the painting is fidelity. That virtue is represented in the oval grisaille by a female figure who strokes a dog while holding the laurel wreath of victory in her other hand.