René-Francois-Xavier Prinet studied with Gérôme, Courtois, and Dagnan-Bouveret, establishing a career as a painter and illustrator of religious subjects, portraits, genre scenes, interiors, and landscapes. Among his many projects, he co-created the Salon des Tuileries and taught at the Académie Libre and the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts. This sheet, dedicated to Antoinette Gide as a souvenir of a soirée held in September 1921, depicts a young man dressed in mid-nineteenth-century costume. Standing beside a pianoforte, he may represent a composer who attended or performed at one of the evening entertainments attended by Gide and Prinet.
Signed and inscribed at lower left, "A Antoinette Gide,/ en Souvenir de la Soirée de 21 Sept. 1921/ Rene X Prinet"
Voelkle, William M., former owner.