Louis Chéron was a French painter, illustrator and art tutor.

Life

Born into a French Protestant family of artists (his father being the miniaturist and engraver Henri Chéron and his elder sister the painter and engraver Elizabeth-Sophie Chéron). He trained under his father then at the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. On the trips to Rome occasioned by his first winning of the Académie's prix de Rome

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...

 in 1676 (he won again in 1678), he studied Raphael

Raphael

Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino , better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur...

 and Giulio Romano

Giulio Romano

Giulio Romano was an Italian painter and architect. A pupil of Raphael, his stylistic deviations from high Renaissance classicism help define the 16th-century style known as Mannerism...

. He returned to France, winning several commissions but in the wake of the persecutions after the edict of Nantes

Edict of Nantes

The Edict of Nantes, issued on 13 April 1598, by Henry IV of France, granted the Calvinist Protestants of France substantial rights in a nation still considered essentially Catholic. In the Edict, Henry aimed primarily to promote civil unity...

's revocation in 1685 he decided to leave France (possibly encouraged by Ralph Montagu

Ralph Montagu, 1st Duke of Montagu

Ralph Montagu, 1st Duke of Montagu was an English courtier and diplomat.-Life:He was the second son of Edward Montagu, 2nd Baron Montagu of Boughton and Anne Winwood, daughter of the Secretary of State Ralph Winwood...

, later one of his patrons), showing up in the registers of the Huguenot congregation at the Savoy Chapel

Savoy Chapel

The Savoy Chapel or the Queen's Chapel of the Savoy is a chapel off the Strand, London, dedicated to St John the Baptist. It was originally built in the medieval era off the main church of the Savoy Palace...

 in London in 1693. He was made a naturalised Briton in 1710, worked on Montague House (1706–12), Burghley House

Burghley House

Burghley House is a grand 16th-century country house near the town of Stamford, Lincolnshire, England...

 and Chatsworth House

Chatsworth House

Chatsworth House is a stately home in North Derbyshire, England, northeast of Bakewell and west of Chesterfield . It is the seat of the Duke of Devonshire, and has been home to his family, the Cavendish family, since Bess of Hardwick settled at Chatsworth in 1549.Standing on the east bank of the...

 and was one of five artists who submitted drawings for St Paul's Cathedral

St Paul's Cathedral

St Paul's Cathedral, London, is a Church of England cathedral and seat of the Bishop of London. Its dedication to Paul the Apostle dates back to the original church on this site, founded in AD 604. St Paul's sits at the top of Ludgate Hill, the highest point in the City of London, and is the mother...

's dome. He also produced engraved images with James Thornhill

James Thornhill

Sir James Thornhill was an English painter of historical subjects, in the Italian baroque tradition.-Life:...

. In 1718 Chéron and John Vanderbank

John Vanderbank

John Vanderbank was an English portrait painter and book illustrator, who enjoyed a high reputation for a short while during the reign of King George I, but who died relatively young due to an intemperate and extravagant lifestyle.-Life:Vanderbank was born in London, the eldest son of John...

 split from Godfrey Kneller

Godfrey Kneller

Sir Godfrey Kneller, 1st Baronet was the leading portrait painter in England during the late 17th and early 18th centuries, and was court painter to British monarchs from Charles II to George I...

's Great Queen Street Academy (where they were both teaching) to form their own St. Martin's Lane Academy

St. Martin's Lane Academy

The St. Martin's Lane Academy, which was the precursor of the Royal Academy, was organized in 1735 by William Hogarth, from the circle of artists and designers who gathered at Slaughter's Coffee House at the upper end of St. Martin's Lane, London. The artistic set that introduced the Rococo style...

. On Chéron's death in 1725 he was buried at St Paul's, Covent Garden

St Paul's, Covent Garden

St Paul's Church, also commonly known as the Actors' Church, is a church designed by Inigo Jones as part of a commission by Francis Russell, 4th Earl of Bedford in 1631 to create "houses and buildings fitt for the habitacons of Gentlemen and men of ability" in Covent Garden, London, England.As well...

.

External links