Gabriel de Saint-Aubin, born in 1724, never left his native Paris. He studied at the prestigious Royal Academy but failed to win the coveted Prix de Rome. He is often said to have reacted to this disappointment by throwing aside all hopes of a traditional artistic career and hastening out into the thoroughfares of Paris to sketch everything in sight, living an errant, bohemian existence and succumbing increasingly to an obsession with drawing. But despite his personal eccentricities he was employed as an illustrator all his life.