François-Louis Lanfant de Metz artwork • painting • previously for sale The money-box

Pupil of Arie Scheffer and then genre painter, usually with small children as subject. Such paintings depicting children, cheerfully engrossed in their play or imitating the world of adults, were extremely popular in the last century. The genre originated in the children's portraits of Greuze and Thomas Laurence and had imitators all over Europe, such as - in this case - Lanfant de Metz in France, Jan Marie ten Kate in Holland and August Heyn in Germany.