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(1) Christophe Huet
(b Pontoise, Val d’Oise, 22 June 1700; d Paris, 2 May 1759). Painter. In 1734 he was admitted to the Académie de Saint-Luc; he later exhibited in the first Salons that this Académie mounted, in 1751, 1752 and 1756, showing animal paintings. In his own lifetime he was known chiefly as an animal painter, but few works by him in this genre have been identified, probably because they have been confused with those of his nephew (2) Jean-Baptiste Huet. However, his Dog Pointing at Partridges (1740; Nantes, Mus. B.-A.) shows the influence of François Desportes. Huet’s reputation now rests entirely on the attractive interiors that he designed for various houses in and around Paris. He was responsible for the décor of a salon in the château of Champs (Seine-et-Marne), which he painted for Mme de Pompadour, and the ‘Cabinet des Singes’ at the Hôtel de Rohan, Paris. In 1733 he worked with Claude Audran III on the décor of the château of Anet for the Duchesse du Maine (a gilded salon, destr.). Huet is also credited with two rooms decorated with painted singeries in the château of Chantilly (for illustration see SINGERIE), which Edmond de Goncourt attributed to Antoine Watteau. In all these décors Huet featured conventional Chinese characters busily engaged in very Occidental pastimes and accompanied by monkeys imitating men. These witty scenes, painted in an alert style, without constraint and with great elegance, put Huet in the ranks of the best ornamental painters of the first half of the 18th century.
Part of the Huet family
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