While detailed biographical information about Jean Etienne Le Bel remains obscure, signatures on a few works permit the character and range of his oeuvre to be defined more precisely.

In 1760, following the petitioning of M. de La Roche, a Monsieur Le Bel was granted a privilège du roi for decorating ostrich eggs, his intercessor noting “ce garçon est sage et a du talent; le Roy a trové set oeufs très jolyments peints”. Fourteen years later, in 1774, Le Bel exhibited at the Académie de Saint Luc “Un Œuf d”Autruche sur lequel est peint un Sujet de Carnival’. At least two signed examples of these works survive, one in the collection of the Château de Versailles, the other in the Detroit Institute of Arts. Dated 1761, the miniature is executed in the fixé sous verre technique, a form of painting originally called à la manière éludorique, that had been invented by Arnaud Vincent de Montpetit (1713–1800) some years previously. In the Almanach of 1776 Le Bel, together with de Montpetit and Pierre Victor Nicolas de Malliée (active 1748–after 1776), were identified as the leading practitioners of the art form.

At an unknown date Le Bel studied the technique of painting in enamel. His signature appears on the en plein enamel decoration of two snuffboxes by Jean Joseph Barrière, dated 1765 1766 and 1768–1769, in the Schatzkammer of the Princely House of Thurn und Taxis, Regensburg. The second of these boxes is painted in sepia tones with bacchanalian subjects, very similar to those on the plaque, signed E. Le Bel, set on the current item. All show considerable mastery of form and execution. It is likely that his ability to paint in enamel led to Jean Etienne Le Bel’s employment at the Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory, where he was in charge of the hard-paste atelier de peinture from April 1773 until February 1775. His wage was commensurate with his position, earning the same as Jean Baptiste Etienne Genest (1722–1789) who held the same position in the soft-paste atelier de peinture. Jean Nicolas Le Bel (1749–after 1816), presumably his younger brother, who worked at the factory as a flower painter from 1765 until 1793, was paid considerably less.

In the entry about Le Bel in the Almanach of 1776 it was also noted that “Il peint le genre & à l”huile’, but there is little surviving evidence of this aspect of his artistic activity. When he exhibited the ostrich egg at the Académie de Saint Luc in 1774, Le Bel included a second work, a small gouache painting, Le désordre d’une guinguette, which answers for the first part of this entry; an oil on copper painting, signed E. Le Bel, depicting figures outside a tavern, sold Lempertz, Cologne, 11–12 March 1938, lot 127, answers for both categories. Other than these, the only attributable pictorial work is a composition, Le coup de vent, representing a pair of lovers in a windy landscape, which was engraved by Abraham Girardet (1764 1823) in 1785.

The Almanach of 1776 provided an explanation of the fixé sous verre technique: “The eludoric method simply consists of spreading a silk sheet impregnated with oil on a sheet of glass and then painting figures or objects in the usual way. When the work is nearly finished, the artist leaves it in water for a few hours in order to identify any weak features which will be touched up. After this, he leaves his work again in water to allow the degreasing process to be completed; when he takes it out he adapts it and fixes it, using a composition of gum and sugar dissolved in water, behind a sheet of glass which replaces the varnish.” The completed work was lifted from the glass base and the exposed reverse coated with gesso or lead white. Before the paste had dried a sheet of backing fabric was pressed onto it to provide better protection

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