Original Antique Alexandre Cabanel Museum Quality Portrait Oil Painting. Once hung at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on loan from Mrs. Gardiner Greene Hammond. It depicts a handsome gentleman of the period. Artist signed upper left. ABOUT THE ARTIST Alexandre Cabanel was a French painter. He painted historical, classical and religious subjects in the academic style. He was also well known as a portrait painter. According to Diccionario Enciclopedico Salvat, Cabanel is the best representative of the L'art pompier, and was Napoleon III's preferred painter.