Portrait of Benoît Agnès Trioson (1790–1804), nicknamed Ruehaus

Girodet's portrait of Benoît Agnès Trioson from around 1800 depicts the son of his guardian Dr. Benoît Trioson—one of the most personal and emotionally invested works in his portraiture, painting the child of the man who had effectively replaced the father Girodet lost young. The young Benoît Agnès, who would die of tuberculosis at fourteen in 1804, was a subject of deep personal attachment for Girodet, and the portrait's intimate quality reflects the family relationship that made this commission quite different from his social and official portraiture. Girodet later painted Trioson's grief at his son's death in a major mythological work, demonstrating how thoroughly personal attachment shaped his most ambitious artistic projects.

The child's portrait is rendered with remarkable tenderness and sensitivity, the soft, luminous flesh tones creating an image of youthful innocence. Girodet's polished Neoclassical technique is here employed with unusual warmth and emotional directness.