Jean-Pierre Saint-Ours is one of the most important painters from the École genevoise de peinture. Born in Geneva in 1750, he quickly went to Paris and studied first at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, then in the workshop of Joseph-Marie Vien (1716-1809). His career is brilliant: in 1780, while studying at the Académie royale, he won the prestigious Prix de Rome for his painting of the Rape of the Sabine women, which is now unfortunately destroyed. Usually, the price for winning the Prix de Rome was a paid trip to Italy to study the paintings of the masters. However, Jean-Pierre Saint-Ours being a foreigner and a protestant, could not receive this reward, and the Swiss painter therefore went to Italy on his own. There, he focused mainly on the depictions of the customs of ancient people rather than the images of ancient heroes, like his contemporaries.

The present painting is the last known sketch realized by Jean-Pierre Saint-Ours, only two years before his death. It shows a lively brushstroke, a rapid application of paint, and a remarkable work on contrasting colors that give a vibrant and lively appearance. This painting is included in the catalogue raisonné and depicts the Coronation of the Winner (the scene that directly follows the Olympic games). This Coronation of the Winner is the preparatory sketch for the second version of the Olympic games that Jean-Pierre Saint-Ours painted in 1807 and that is currently housed in the Musée d’art et d’histoire de Genève. The composition of this second version is very close to the painting of the Olympic games, which explains why the present preparatory painting was many times confused with a sketch for the Olympic games. However, the central scene depicts here the winner of the Olympic games being presented to the jury, while it shows two male figures battling in the actual painting of the Olympic games. Jean-Pierre Saint-Ours undoubtedly realized the painting of the Coronation of the Winner following the success of his first Olympic Games, finished in 1790 in Rome and acquired the following year by the great collector François Tronchin (1704-1798).

The present sketch also has a fascinating and well-documented provenance: in 1860, Swiss artist Jules Hébert (1812-1897) realized a lithograph that bears the inscription “d’après l’esquisse peinte appartenant à Mr John Revilliod” (i.e., after the painted sketch belonging to Mr. John Revilliod). We therefore know that John Revilliod (1798-1875), director of the Bank of Commerce of Geneva, owned this sketch. He possibly offered it to the Société des Amis des Beaux-Arts, an organization that organized lottery to raise funding for the arts in Geneva. Maybe the lithograph by Jules Hébert was executed to advertise the painting, which was perhaps the lot offered for one of these lotteries.