Adolph D. Rinck (American/New Orleans, b. c. 1810), "Portrait of Jean Baptiste Armant, Sr. (1776-1854)", oil on canvas, signed and dated "1841" upper right, 37.5in. x 29 in., in a period frame. E8000-12000 Provenance: Descended through Armant-Legendre-McCall-Baldwin Family, New Orleans. Note: A prosperous St. James Parish planter, Jean- Baptiste Armant married Rose Carmelite Cantrelle and they had a large family of thirteen children, eight boys and five girls. Their son John S. Armant was named Adjutant General by Louisiana Governor Alexandre Mouton and served as state senator. John S. and Louise Amelie Fuselier de la Claire Armant's son, Leopold L. Armant, was educated as a lawyer and served as a representative in the legislature from St. James Parish. During the Civil War, Leopold rose to the rank of colonel in the Louisiana Infantry and was tragically killed in the Battle of Mansfield in 1864. The artist Adolph D. Rinck was born in France and trained at the Royal Academy of Berlin. Following Jean Joseph Vaudechamp's success as a portrait artist in New Orleans, Rinck arrived in the city during the winter of 1840 and advertised as a portrait painter. Soon Rinck's talent as an artist became well known and he earned numerous portrait commissions from the wealthy planters and merchants of New Orleans and Southern Louisiana. This beautifully rendered painting in the prevailing French Neoclassical tradition depicted "Jean-Baptiste Armant" as affluent planter whose rotund stature evidently reveals his enjoyment of the fine cuisine of Southern Louisiana. Ref: Glenn Conrad, ed., A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography, The Louisiana Historical Association, 1988, p. 19.