This Oil on Canvas work entitled “Mythological Scene in the Heavens” utilizes the underlining skills that brought Taraval to the forefront in his era. Focusing on lush colors, curving bodies and cloth textures exemplify the Rococo style. The position of the creatures’ bodies and the sash above seemly carried by putti draw the eye towards the center reinforcing the importance of what many believe to be Venus as the central figure. The absence of color in Venus draws the eye towards this figure while the whirlwind of activity draws the eye through multiple settings on its journey to the center focal point,

Taraval was born in Paris, the son of the French painter Guillaume Taraval, who moved his family to Stockholm in 1732 to work on the decoration of the new Royal Palace. Initially a pupil of his father, Hugues returned to Paris after his father's death in 1750. In Paris he studied with Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre and Charles-André van Loo.

In 1756, he won the Prix de Rome with “Job Mocked by his Wife”, now in the Musée des beaux-arts de Marseille. In Rome he was a pupil of Charles-Joseph Natoire at the Académie française.

Admitted to the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture (Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture) in Paris in 1765, he was received there in 1769. His reception piece is “a Triumph of Bacchus”, one of the elements of the ceiling of the Galerie d'Apollon in the Louvre.

As a painter and decorator he worked at the Château de Bellevue, France in Meudon (1767), the École Militaire (Military School) of Paris (1773), the Collège de France (1777), the Château de Marly (1781), and the Palace of Fontainebleau (1781).

Hugues Taraval died in Paris.[1]