Lionel ROYER (1852-1926). Young woman with cherries. Oil on canvas signed lower right. Height : 46 cm - Width : 38 cm Provenance: Artist's family, then private collection. Note: At the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Paris, where Lionel Royer was enrolled, he studied with Alexandre Cabanel (1823-1889) and William Bouguereau (1825-1905), both considered major representatives of academic painting in the Second Empire and late 19th century. He went on to become a renowned portraitist of the Parisian elite. For twenty years, his portraits of women, with their sure drawing, pleasant coloring and aristocratic style, placed the artist at the pinnacle of academicism. But above all, he was a painter of history, a commentator on his time.