ALEXANDER JOSEPH VON STEUBEN France, 1814 - 1862 Girls at the fountain Signed Steuben pinx, Rome 1843 bottom centre Oil on canvas, 81X61 cm Girls at the fountain Signed Steuben pinx, Rome 1843 bottom centre Oil on canvas, cm 81X61 Estimate ? 400 ; 800 Alexandre Joseph, Baron De Steuben was born into a family deeply attached to art. His father, Charles Auguste, was a well-known painter, and it was he who introduced him to the secrets of the trade. From a young age, Alexandre showed a natural talent for drawing and colour, which he honed in the studio of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, one of the greatest masters of French Neoclassicism. From Ingres he learnt a taste for pure line, the composure of figures and the search for a timeless ideal of beauty. His official debut took place at the Paris Salon of 1840, where he won a third class medal with the painting Rubens, an accolade that opened the door to critics and the public. Eager to further his education, he spent three years in Rome, immersed in the study of the great masters of the Renaissance and Baroque. That stay was decisive: the influence of Italian monumentality and a new luminous sensibility can be felt in his later paintings. Afterwards, he lived ten years in Russia, where he was called to court for important imperial commissions. Among his most significant works of this period is Jacob blessing his sons, a large painting destined for St. Isaac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg, executed at the request of the Emperor himself. Back in France, he regularly participated in the Parisian Salons, continuing to distinguish himself for his compositions of religious and historical subjects, in which he combined the formal rigour learnt from Ingres with the chromatic richness he had acquired during his travels. His works reflect a vision of art as a quest for harmony, nobility and ideal beauty, in perfect harmony with the neoclassical spirit of his time.