historical painter who was one of the leading early Neoclassicists in France.

Drouais's father, François-Hubert Drouais (1727–75), and his grandfather, Hubert Drouais (1699–1767), were well-known portrait painters. Jean studied first under his father, then under N.-G. Brenet, and finally under Jacques-Louis David, whom he accompanied to Rome. There he was influenced by ancient art and by Raphael. J.W. von Goethe, who was at Rome when Drouais's “Marius at Minturno” was finished, has recorded the deep impression made by the picture. The last picture he completed was “Philoctetes on the Island of Lemnos.”