French painter and engraver, part of a family of artists, nephew of Christophe Huet. He trained with his father, Nicolas Huet (1718-after 1788), and was then apprenticed to the animal painter Charles Dagomer (active 1762-1764), a member of the Académie de Saint-Luc. Huet's interest in printmaking and his acquaintance with Gilles Demarteau (1722-1776), who later engraved many of his compositions, both date from this period. Around 1764 Huet entered the studio of Jean-Baptiste Le Prince, where he further developed his skill as an engraver; most of his engravings and etchings were reproductions of his own work. In 1768 he was approved (agréé) by the Académie Royale, and in 1769 he was received (reçu) as an animal painter with his painting of a Dog Attacking Geese (Paris, Louvre). He first exhibited pictures at the Paris Salon in 1769. The most important of these were his morceau de réception, the Fox in the Chicken-run (Fine Arts Museums, San Francisco), and the Milkmaid (Paris, Musée Cognacq-Jay). The latter is a good example of his work in the petite maniere of genre painting popularised by François Boucher, whom he knew and admired. Huet's exhibits of 1769 were well received by the critics, especially by Louis Petit de Bachaumont and des Boulmiers in the Mercure de France. The quality of his animal pictures was widely praised, although Diderot made some criticisms of his draughtsmanship. Huet wanted the Académie to recognize him as a history painter, so he submitted an Adoration of the Shepherds to the 1775 Salon and followed this in 1779 with a painting of Hercules and Omphale (both untraced). Critical and academic opinion was unfavourable; however, evidence of his aspirations can be seen in his later works, an example being the Classical bas-relief in the background of the Spaniel Attacking a Turkey (1789; St Petersburg, Hermitage). Huet exhibited regularly at the Salon until 1789. //