The Cour du commerce in Paris was originally intended only as a small connecting street, which soon developed into a network of passages and today as a shopping mile still breathes a little of the spirit of the French Revolution. Danton lived here, Marat as well, murdered at home. The doctor Guillotin filed as there on the construction for his execution machine. Two years before the outbreak of the Revolution, a painter, by now about 33 years old and already an established artist, also took up residence there for a time. How inspired he himself was by their ideas, the public was to learn only later. Jean-Baptiste Regnault was a native of Paris, but when he was ten years old, his father and his family moved to America. He himself then had to go to sea for five years before his mother, now widowed, returned to Paris. This biography of childhood and adolescence has left no significant traces in his further life.
The artistic talent, on the other hand, had been recognized early. Back home he received art lessons and was taken to Rome by his teacher Jean Bardin for training purposes. Perhaps it was there that he developed his penchant for mythological themes of antiquity, but in any case, artistically he was in the era that was later called classicism. In any case, one can attest to his saddle firmness in the subject matter with regard to his depictions, by no means a matter of course for that time. He passed his first test for the Parisian art world with flying colors: his painting of Alexander the Great and his visit to the philosopher Diogenes was awarded the Prix de Rome by the Academy (at that time still Royale) in 1776, a scholarship for a study stay in Rome at the Villa Médicis, a dependency of the Academy. Finally, in 1783, he was accepted by it as a member. His ticket for this is a representation of Achilles during his education by the centaur Chiron. The membership gives him the right to exhibit at the Paris Salon. He paints with devotion mythological, rarely religious and now and then portraits, including his own.
Then, three years after his stay in the Cour de Commerce and in the first year of the Revolution, the artistic commitment to its values: an allegorical proclamation of human rights, followed five years later by "La Libertè ou la Mort": it symbolizes the possibility of rational man to choose freedom, holding up in his hand a Jacobin cap. As an alternative, death lurks as the Grim Reaper. Despite these unambiguous positions, he does not antagonize during the Restoration and is able to live well from state teaching positions with his wife and three sons. At the end of his life, he even received the dignity of baron. Regnault was laid to rest at Père-Lachaise. Danton and Marat are forgotten. Only Guillotin's tomb is also there.
The Cour du commerce in Paris was originally intended only as a small connecting street, which soon developed into a network of passages and today as a shopping mile still breathes a little of the spirit of the French Revolution. Danton lived here, Marat as well, murdered at home. The doctor Guillotin filed as there on the construction for his execution machine. Two years before the outbreak of the Revolution, a painter, by now about 33 years old and already an established artist, also took up residence there for a time. How inspired he himself was by their ideas, the public was to learn only later. Jean-Baptiste Regnault was a native of Paris, but when he was ten years old, his father and his family moved to America. He himself then had to go to sea for five years before his mother, now widowed, returned to Paris. This biography of childhood and adolescence has left no significant traces in his further life.
The artistic talent, on the other hand, had been recognized early. Back home he received art lessons and was taken to Rome by his teacher Jean Bardin for training purposes. Perhaps it was there that he developed his penchant for mythological themes of antiquity, but in any case, artistically he was in the era that was later called classicism. In any case, one can attest to his saddle firmness in the subject matter with regard to his depictions, by no means a matter of course for that time. He passed his first test for the Parisian art world with flying colors: his painting of Alexander the Great and his visit to the philosopher Diogenes was awarded the Prix de Rome by the Academy (at that time still Royale) in 1776, a scholarship for a study stay in Rome at the Villa Médicis, a dependency of the Academy. Finally, in 1783, he was accepted by it as a member. His ticket for this is a representation of Achilles during his education by the centaur Chiron. The membership gives him the right to exhibit at the Paris Salon. He paints with devotion mythological, rarely religious and now and then portraits, including his own.
Then, three years after his stay in the Cour de Commerce and in the first year of the Revolution, the artistic commitment to its values: an allegorical proclamation of human rights, followed five years later by "La Libertè ou la Mort": it symbolizes the possibility of rational man to choose freedom, holding up in his hand a Jacobin cap. As an alternative, death lurks as the Grim Reaper. Despite these unambiguous positions, he does not antagonize during the Restoration and is able to live well from state teaching positions with his wife and three sons. At the end of his life, he even received the dignity of baron. Regnault was laid to rest at Père-Lachaise. Danton and Marat are forgotten. Only Guillotin's tomb is also there.
Page 1 / 1