Charles-Joseph Natoire

His reputation was quickly established, and he received major commissions notably from French Queen Marie Leszczyńska to paint several of her children.

From 1731 to 1740 he provided several suites of canvasses for Philibert Orry, contrôleur général des finances, who was to succeed the duc d'Antin as general director of the Bâtiments du Roi in 1736.

In the same year his first royal commission arrived, for the Chambre de la Reine at Versailles and was made a full member of the Académie on 31 December with a Venus Commanding from Vulcan the Arms of Aeneas.

A major loss was his illusionistic decor for the chapel in the Hôpital des Enfants-Trouvés (1746–1750), built by Germain Boffrand but demolished in the 19th century.

Far from court, Natoire witnessed his rivals Carle Van Loo, then François Boucher named premier peintre du Roi in turn.

He all but ceased painting, turning his energies instead to the Academy, pressing the pensionnaires to produce the envoies that were forwarded to Paris as proof of their progress and sending them out to draw in the countryside of the Roman campagna.

[5] He was ennobled in April 1753 and received the Order of Saint-Michel, an honour he had impatiently awaited, but he found himself out of sympathy with the new neoclassical style that was being developed by the Academy's pensionnaires.

In 1767, the architect Adrien Mouton, who had been expelled from the Academy, brought a suit that he won in 1770: Natoire was fined 20,000 livres and court costs with interest, accused of administrative errors.