Jean-Baptiste Perronneau, 'Jacques Cazotte', probably 1753

Jacques Cazotte (1719–1792) is best known as the author of Le Diable amoureux (‘The Amorous Devil’), a tale about a devil disguised as a beautiful woman trying to take possession of a man, and other fantastical fiction. He was also a colonial administrator, a maker and supplier of fine wine, an amateur painter, a collector of old master paintings and a dabbler in counter-revolutionary circles.

Born in Dijon, Cazotte worked in Martinique until ill health forced him to retire. In 1760 he inherited a chateau at Pierry near Châlons-sur-Marne, including vineyards, which allowed him to live in ease and concentrate on producing and marketing his wines. In 1761 Cazotte married Elisabeth Roignan. The couple had three children.

From 1760 Cazotte began writing regularly, although an early work, his romantic fairy tale La Patte du Chat, had been published in 1741. His epic prose poem Ollivier, based on Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, was published in 1763 to immediate success. However, Cazotte’s life was to be cut short by the French Revolution. He saw the rise of Revolutionary fervour in France as a fight between Good, represented by Louis XVI, and Evil, represented by the Revolution. He wanted the monarchy to be strengthened and a return to the laws of the past to correct current abuses. Cazotte set out his political views in a series of letters, which turned out to be his undoing. After the letters were discovered in 1792, he was arrested and imprisoned for counter-revolution. He was found guilty and sentenced to death. On 25 September 1792, he was executed on the guillotine, where he met his death with great courage, exclaiming to the crowd: ‘I die as I have lived, faithful to God and to my king.’ All of Cazotte’s property, including his library and collection of 104 pictures (some, he claimed, by Poussin, Titian and Lesueur), was confiscated, leaving his widow and daughter destitute.

Perronneau’s portraits are known for their strong colours and bold mark-making. He uses sophisticated combinations of colour – for example blue and green in the flesh tones and pink, yellow and blue streaks in the sitters’ powdered hair. Perronneau’s portrait is unusual in showing the sitter turned away from us, as though in lively conversation with someone to his right. Cazotte appears relaxed and amused, with his hat tucked under his arm. He wears a coat and waistcoat of salmon pink silk lined with white. The vivacity of the expression is matched by the brilliant handling of the pink costume. In these respects the portrait contrasts with the more direct approach of La Tour as shown in his portrait of Henry Dawkins. The Flemish lace of Cazotte’s shirt frill, which matches his ruffled cuff, is thrown into prominence by the black silk ribbon, known as a solitaire, tied round his wig at the back with the ends brought round and pinned under his lace frill.

The portrait may have been commissioned in 1763 to celebrate the success of Cazotte’s prose poem, Ollivier, or perhaps in 1753 when Perronneau became an Academician, which would be more consistent with Cazotte’s age here.