[1] [2] Gros, a former pupil of Jacques-Louis David, became known for his history paintings blending neoclassicism and romanticism.

He also produces a number of portraits of including this depiction of the fashionable Maistre sisters.

It was painted during the French Directory, the more moderate era that followed the Reign of Terror.

Today the painting is in the Art Institute of Chicago in Illinois, having been acquired in 1990.

[3] This article about an eighteenth-century painting is a stub.