Duplessis returned to Carpentras, spent a brief time in
Lyon then arrived about 1752 in Paris, where he was accepted into the
Académie de Saint-Luc and exhibited some portraits, which were now his specialty, in 1764, but did not achieve much notice until his exhibition of ten paintings at the
Paris Salon of 1769, very well received and selected for special notice by
Denis Diderot; the
Académie de peinture et de sculpture accepted him in the category of portraitist, considered a lesser category at the time. He continued to exhibit at the Paris salons, both finished paintings and sketches, until 1791, and once more, in 1801. His portrait of the
Dauphine in 1771 and his appointment as a
peintre du Roi assured his success: most of his surviving portraits date from the 1770s and 1780s. He received privileged lodgings in the Galeries du Louvre. In the Revolution, he withdrew to safe obscurity at Carpentras during the
Reign of Terror. Afterwards, from 1796, he served as curator at the newly founded museum formed at
Versailles, so recently emptied of its furnishings at the
Revolutionary sales. His uncompromising self-portrait at this time of his life is at
Versailles, where he died. The rue Joseph Duplessis in
Magnac-sur-Touvre is named after him. ==Work==