Signed, this oil on unlined canvas by Auguste-Xavier Leprince (Paris 1799 – Nice 1826) depicts The Town Crier.

Born in Paris, Leprince's father Pierre and his brother Robert were also painters, and his talent for sensitive, anecdotal landscape and specialised genre scenes could never be fully realised as he died so young, at just twenty-six.

The Town Crier combines a fluid organisation of the figure grouping with a rich palette. Despite the canvas's small format, Leprince depicts the characters gathered in the town square in considerable detail, and a story unfolds in front of the viewer - a narrative approach shared with contemporaries such as the Swiss artist Töpffer.

Collectors of early nineteenth-century French genre painting and of artists whose careers were cut tragically short will find this a rare and accomplished example of Leprince's narrative gifts.