Portrait du sculpteur Jean Thierry

This 1730 portrait of the sculptor Jean Thierry, held by the Museum of Fine Arts in Lyon, represents Largillière's portrait of a fellow practitioner in the visual arts—the kind of inter-professional connection that linked painters and sculptors within the Paris Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, to which both artists belonged. Jean Thierry was a French sculptor known for his decorative work and portraits in marble; a Largillière portrait of him would have been a reciprocal professional tribute, possibly exchanged or given rather than formally commissioned. Lyon's Museum of Fine Arts holds one of France's most important regional collections, with strong holdings in French painting from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. At 1730, Largillière was in his seventies and still among the most sought-after portraitists in Paris, and Thierry's choice of him reflects the sculptor's ambition and social standing.

A portrait of a sculptor offered Largillière the opportunity to introduce professional attributes: clay model, chisel, or drawings that established the sitter's artistic identity. His treatment of a fellow artist would likely have been slightly less formally bound than a courtly or ecclesiastical commission, allowing for a more direct and characterful presentation.