Portrait of Laurent-Nicolas de Joubert

Laurent-Nicolas de Joubert (1736–1812) was a French botanist and academic, professor and eventually rector of the Faculty of Medicine at Montpellier. Fabre's 1787 portrait at the J. Paul Getty Museum was made just after Fabre's Prix de Rome win and before his departure for Italy — a work of his early maturity that already demonstrates the confident handling he would develop over his Italian career. Joubert's academic identity as a man of science gives the portrait a specific intellectual character: the sitter is defined by his learning rather than his social rank alone. The portrait tradition of the scientist or intellectual required careful calibration of attributes — books, specimens, papers — without reducing the sitter to a mere inventory of professional objects.

Fabre's portrait of the scientist employs the half-length academic formula with intellectual attributes — books and papers — to identify the sitter's vocation. The handling shows the influence of David's disciplined facture, smooth and precise, with clear modelling of the head and controlled treatment of the secondary elements.