Who Is Louvre's Favorite Artist?

1. Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes (1750-1819), 127 Artworks Collected in Louvre.

Born in Toulouse in 1750, Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes was a French Neoclassical landscape painter and academic. His treatise, Elémens de perspective practique, à l'usage des artistes (Elements of Practical Perspective for Artists 1799-1800), and his "en plein air" painting landscape oil studies are significant contributions to the art world. Vastly influential throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, Valenciennes remains an important figure to this day, known for his role in revolutionizing nature and landscape painting from a minor genre with little recognition to the genre that inspired Impressionism and a tradition of painting outside in open air.

2. Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875), 106 Artworks Collected in Louvre.

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot is largely known as a 19th-century landscape painter or realist painter. Both his open-air oil studies and his more classical landscape compositions have marked him as an important figure in French painting, although during his lifetime, the former was largely overlooked. He was born in Paris in 1796 to middle-class parents whose economic success allowed their son a formal education, travel opportunities, and ultimately the freedom to develop his skills as an artist. Like many artists of his time, his travels to Italy and the country’s natural beauty had a profound influence on his work. Although he excelled at and was drawn to depicting nature over people or scenes, Corot mastered the incorporation of biblical and mythological themes into his paintings. This more classical tradition was in demand and brought him much of the attention he enjoyed in his lifetime.

3. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867), 57 Artworks Collected in Louvre.

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres was born in 1780 in Montauban in southern France. Although he is largely associated with the neoclassical style and he closely adhered to the academic tradition, he’s known additionally for experimenting with form and narrative. For this reason Ingres is sometimes credited with reimagining the classical traditions. Ingres was a master of portraiture, but thought of himself as a history painter and preferred grand narratives and historical subjects. He went on to become the Director of the French Academy, where he could enforce his conservative artistic ideals. With Ingres’ death in 1867 came the Realism movement in France, modern style, and an end to the stronghold of academic and ancient classical standards of which he had been an icon.

4. Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863), 55 Artworks Collected in Louvre.

Eugène Delacroix, born in 1798, was a prominent painter during the Romantic Movement. By the time he was sixteen years old, both of his parents had died and he was placed in the care of his older sister. As a young man, he took painting lessons from Pierre Guérin, and these lessons, along with his formal education at the lycée, set Delacroix on his path to becoming a leader of the Romantic painters. In maturity, he became a favored artist for grand-scale commissions, completing monumental and narrative works on the walls and ceilings of the Palais Bourbon, the Luxembourg Palace, the Louvre, and more.

5. Eustache Le Sueur (1616-1655), 55 Artworks Collected in Louvre.

Associated with the Baroque and Classic styles of painting, Eustache Le Sueur was an important 17th century painter and one of the twelve founding members of the French Academy of Painting. Though heavily influenced by the works of Raphael and Nicolas Poussin, Le Sueur was born, lived, and died in Paris - never traveling to Italy to study the great masters the way many of his contemporaries had. Nevertheless, his training under the highly praised Simon Vouet and his unique decorative style has earned him the title of the “French Raphael.” He is most popularly known for his biblical paintings and as a prolific draftsman.

6. Théodore Chassériau (1819–1856), 54 Artworks Collected in Louvre.

Théodore Chassériau, French Romantic painter, developed his artistic career early in life, studying under both Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres at age eleven and then Eugene Delacroix, and exhibiting at the Paris Salon by age seventeen. Although brought up in Paris, Chassériau was born in El Limón, a town in the Dominican Republic, to a French diplomat and a French-Haitian woman. A lesser-known painter of the Romantic era, Chassériau’s genius was highly revered during his lifetime.

7. Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), 53 Artworks Collected in Louvre.

Sir Peter Paul Rubens was a successful and influential Flemish painter who lived most of his life in Antwerp although he was born in Siegen, Westphalia in 1577. He later spent a number of years in Rome where he undertook commissions and studied the works of Raphael and Michelangelo. An icon of the Baroque movement, Rubens’ paintings are emblematic of the dramatic use of color, ornamentation, and allegorical narratives that were popular at the time. Rubens was knighted by King Charles I for his diplomacy and artistic brilliance.

Reference:

Laura, Auricchio. (2004). The Transformation of Landscape Painting in France, In: Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History.

Philip, Conisbee. (2009). French Paintings of the Fifteenth through the Eighteenth Century. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue.

Lorenz, Eitner. (2000).  French Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part I: Before Impressionism. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue.

Jason, Rosenfeld. (2004). The Salon and The Royal Academy in the Nineteenth Century, In: Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History.

Fikes, R. (2019). Théodore Chassériau.

Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. (2014). . Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century, In: NGA Online Editions.