Charles André van Loo (1705-1765), known as Carle van Loo (or Vanloo), was an important French painter and the most famous of his family of artists. His grandfather, Jacob van Loo, was a Dutch painter who came to France. His father, Louis-Abraham van Loo, specialized in religious and mythological paintings. Carle van Loo studied with his brother, Jean-Baptiste van Loo, in Turin and Rome before joining the Académie Royale de peinture et de sculpture in Paris, where he won the Prix de Rome in 1724. Carle van Loo had a brilliant career, being professor at the Académie Royale, where the famous Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806) was one of his pupils, and beeing, from 1762 until his death, the painter to the French king Louis XIV. These two magnificent male faces are particularly striking in their expressiveness and point of view. The face on the left, seen from below, is easy to visualize despite the few elements depicted (mouth, nose, eye). The old man on the right, with his tilted head and remarkable attention to wrinkles, looks thoughtful and concentrated.