Jean-Baptiste Regnault
Encyclopedia
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
.
Regnault was born in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, and began life at sea in a merchant vessel. At the age of fifteen his talent attracted attention, and he was sent to Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
by M. de Monval under the care of Bardin
Jean Bardin
Jean Bardin, a French historical painter, born at Montbard in 1732, was a pupil of Lagrénée, the elder; and afterwards studied at Rome. He became a popular artist in France, and was admitted into the Academy in 1779. He was made director of the art school at Orléans in 1788. His subjects are partly...
. After his return to Paris, Regnault, in 1776, won the Grand Prix
Prix de Rome
The Prix de Rome was a scholarship for arts students, principally of painting, sculpture, and architecture. It was created, initially for painters and sculptors, in 1663 in France during the reign of Louis XIV. It was an annual bursary for promising artists having proved their talents by...
for his painting Alexandre and Diogène, and in 1783 he was elected Academician
Académie des beaux-arts
The Académie des Beaux-Arts is a French learned society. It is one of the five academies of the Institut de France.It was created in 1795 as the merger of the:* Académie de peinture et de sculpture...
. His diploma picture, the Education of Achilles
Achilles
In Greek mythology, Achilles was a Greek hero of the Trojan War, the central character and the greatest warrior of Homer's Iliad.Plato named Achilles the handsomest of the heroes assembled against Troy....
by Chiron
Chiron
In Greek mythology, Chiron was held to be the superlative centaur among his brethren.-History:Like the satyrs, centaurs were notorious for being wild and lusty, overly indulgent drinkers and carousers, given to violence when intoxicated, and generally uncultured delinquents...
, is now in the Louvre
Louvre
The Musée du Louvre – in English, the Louvre Museum or simply the Louvre – is one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement...
, as also the Christ taken down from the Cross, originally executed for the royal chapel at Fontainebleau
Fontainebleau
Fontainebleau is a commune in the metropolitan area of Paris, France. It is located south-southeast of the centre of Paris. Fontainebleau is a sub-prefecture of the Seine-et-Marne department, and it is the seat of the arrondissement of Fontainebleau...
, and two minor works – the Origin of Painting and Pygmalion
Pygmalion (mythology)
Pygmalion is a legendary figure of Cyprus. Though Pygmalion is the Greek version of the Phoenician royal name Pumayyaton, he is most familiar from Ovid's Metamorphoses, X, in which Pygmalion was a sculptor who fell in love with a statue he had carved.-In Ovid:In Ovid's narrative, Pygmalion was a...
praying Venus to give Life to his Statue.
Besides various small pictures and allegorical subjects, Regnault was also the author of many large historical paintings; and his school, which reckoned amongst its chief attendants Guérin
Pierre-Narcisse Guérin
Pierre-Narcisse, baron Guérin was a French painter.-Biography:Guérin was born in Paris.A pupil of Jean-Baptiste Regnault, he carried off one of the three grands prix offered in 1796, in consequence of the competition not having taken place since 1793...
, Crepin
Louis-Philippe Crépin
Louis-Philippe Crépin was a French naval painter, one of the first Peintres de la Marine.Crépin was notably a pupil of Joseph Vernet and Hubert Robert....
, Lafitte, Blondel
Merry-Joseph Blondel
Merry-Joseph Blondel was a French neo-classic painter.After a first training in the Dilh et Guerhard porcelain factory, he became a student of Jean-Baptiste Regnault. He won the prestigious 1803 Prix de Rome for his painting Enée portant son père Anchise...
, Robert Lefèvre
Robert Lefèvre
Robert Jacques François Faust Lefèvre was a French painter of portraits, history paintings and religious paintings. He was heavily influenced by Jacques-Louis David and his style s reminiscent of the antique.-Life:Robert Lefèvre made his first drawings on the papers of a procureur to whom his...
, Henriette Lorimier
Henriette Lorimier
Elisabeth Henriette Marthe Lorimier was a popular portraitist in Paris at the beginning of Romanticism.She lived with the French diplomat and philhellene writer Francois Pouqueville ....
and Menjaud, was for a long while the rival in influence of that of David
Jacques-Louis David
Jacques-Louis David was an influential French painter in the Neoclassical style, considered to be the preeminent painter of the era...
.
Besides Merry-Joseph Blondel, Pierre-Narcisse Guérin, Robert Lefèvre, and Henriette Lorimier, Jean-Baptiste Regnault's students include: Godefroy Engelmann
Godefroy Engelmann
Godfroy Engelmann was a 19th century Franco-German Artist.-Biography:Godefroy Engelmann was born in 1788 in Mühlhausen, a small town near the France/Switzerland/Germany border. At the time of his birth Mulhouse was a free German republic associated with the Swiss Confederation, but was annexed by...
, Louis Hersent
Louis Hersent
Louis Hersent was a French painter.]Born in Paris, he became a pupil of David, and obtained the Prix de Rome in 1797. In the Salon of 1802 appeared his "Metamorphosis of Narcissus", and he continued to exhibit with rare interruptions up to 1831...
, Charles Paul Landon
Charles Paul Landon
Charles Paul Landon was a French painter and popular writer on art and artists.He was born in Nonant and entered the studio of Jean-Baptiste Regnault, where he made a lifelong friendship with Robert Lefèvre. He and won the first prize of the Academy in 1792, for study at the French Academy in Rome...
, Hippolyte Lecomte
Hippolyte Lecomte
Hippolyte Lecomte was a French painter best known for large scale historical paintings and ballet designs. His wife, born Camille Vernet, was the sister of the painter Émile Jean-Horace Vernet; the charicaturist Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard, better known as "J.J. Grandville", worked in Lecomte's...
, Jacques Réattu
Jacques Réattu
Jacques Réattu was a French painter and winner of the grand prix de Rome. He was an illegitimate son of the painter Guillaume de Barrême de Châteaufort and Catherine Raspal, sister of the Arles-born painter Antoine Raspal - Antoine gave him his first lessons in painting.In Paris, in 1773 he was a...
, Jean-Hilaire Belloc
Jean-Hilaire Belloc
Jean-Hilaire Belloc was a French painter.-Life:He was a student in the studio of Antoine Gros then of Jean-Baptiste Regnault. He won a medal at the 1810 Paris Salon for his Death of Gaul, friend of Ossian.He was professor of drawing at the l'École-de-Médecine...
.
Jean-Baptiste Regnault was married first to Sophie Meyer, then Sophie Félicité Beaucourt.
His burial place is Père-Lachaise Cemetery.
Selected works
- Alexandre et Diogène, ou Diogéne Visité par Alexandre (1776)
- L'Éducation d'Achille, (1782), Musée du Louvre.
- Déscente de Croix, (1789), Musée du Louvre.
- Oreste et Iphigénie en Tauride, (1787).
- Le Déluge, (1789/91)? Musée du Louvre.
- SocrateSocratesSocrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...
arrachant AlcibiadeAlcibiadesAlcibiades, son of Clinias, from the deme of Scambonidae , was a prominent Athenian statesman, orator, and general. He was the last famous member of his mother's aristocratic family, the Alcmaeonidae, which fell from prominence after the Peloponnesian War...
des bras de la Volupté, (1791), Musée du Louvre. - La Liberté ou la Mort, (1795), Kunsthalle HamburgKunsthalle HamburgThe Hamburger Kunsthalle is an art museum in Hamburg, Germany. The art museum focuses on painting in Hamburg in the 14th century, paintings by Dutch and Flemish artists of the 16th and 17th centuries, French and German paintings of the 19th century, modern, and contemporary art...
. - Les Trois Grâces, (1799), Musée du Louvre.
- Desaix recevant la mort à la bataille de Marengo, (1801) Musée du château, VersaillesVersaillesVersailles , a city renowned for its château, the Palace of Versailles, was the de facto capital of the kingdom of France for over a century, from 1682 to 1789. It is now a wealthy suburb of Paris and remains an important administrative and judicial centre...
. - Portrait de Napoléon au camp de Boulogne, (1804).
- La Marche triomphale de Napoléon Ier vers le temple de l'immortalité, (1804).
- Mariage du prince Jérôme et de la princesse de Wurtemberg, (1810).
- L'Amour et l'Hymen buvant dans la coupe de l'Amitié, (1820), MeauxMeauxMeaux is a commune in the Seine-et-Marne department in the Île-de-France region in the metropolitan area of Paris, France. It is located east-northeast from the center of Paris. Meaux is a sub-prefecture of the department and the seat of an arondissement...
, Musée Bossuet, gift of Professeur Changeux. - Jupiter et Io (1827), Brest, Musée des Beaux-Arts
- Cupidon et Psyché, (1828).
- Pygmalion et sa statue, (Château de Maisons-Laffitte)
- L'origine de la peinture, (Château de Maisons-Laffitte)