Fabre was an outstanding pupil of the neoclassical painter Jacques-Louis David, and won the French Academy's Rome Prize in 1787. He then spent most of his life in Italy, first in Rome and from 1793, in Florence. Fabre specialized in half-length portraits, popular with the British community in Florence, and also continued to paint history pictures and landscapes. He became an enthusiastic collector and is now best known for his collection of sixteenth and seventeenth-century Italian paintings, which is housed in the Musée Fabre in his native Montpellier.
A European style of art and architecture based on Ancient Greek and Roman models, with particular importance put on simplicity and discipline. It first appeared in the 1750s after the discovery of ancient archaeological sites in Greece and Rome. Such ideals have been revived at various points in history since, and contrast with more decadent and dynamic styles such as the Baroque.
