Guillaume Lethière’s life reads like a novel written by Alexandre Dumas—the author of The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo, and The Man in the Iron Mask. The child of a wealthy French plantation owner and Creole freedwoman, he moved from Guadeloupe to Paris at 14. Through talent and hard work, he began to show promise as an artist, but he also had to rely on his family’s powerful social and political connections—although it would be many years before his father was able to recognize him as his heir.
After a four-year appointment to study painting at the French Academy in Rome, Lethière returned to Paris in the midst of the French Revolution, where he adroitly mastered the intricacies of the art market and aligned himself with the new regime—eventually becoming an aide to Napoleon’s brother, Lucien, when he was sent to Spain as an ambassador.
