Paul Delaroche
1797-1856
Hippolyte (Paul) Delaroche was a French painter, born into a wealthy family, in Paris on the 17th of July 1797. He was determined to become an artist. His father was successful in negotiating and cataloguing, buying and selling. He was proud of his son's talent, and decided to unable his artistic education. In 1818 Paul Delaroche entered the studio of Antoine-Jean Gros. Delaroche is best known today as representative of French Academism.
Delaroche made his début at the Salon in 1822 with "Christ Descended from the Cross" and "Jehosheba Saving Joash." That promoted him as an established artist; put him in central group of historical painters with Gericault and Delacroix together, with whom he became friends. The three of them were the central group of a large body of historical painters, such as perhaps never before lived in one locality and at one time.
Delaroche's response to contemporary, highly influential, Romantic challenge to the dominance of Neo-classicism was to conduct a course between the two currents, unwilling to fully accept Romanticism. His public standing was strongly in certain views of historic subjects expressed in popular romantic manner, but painted with a solid, smooth surface, which gave an appearance of the highest finish.
His work was not always historically accurate. "Cromwell lifting the Coffin-lid and looking at the Body of Charles" is an incident only to be excused by an improbable tradition. "The King in the Guard-Room, with villainous roundhead soldiers blowing tobacco smoke in his patient face," is a libel on the Puritans. "Queen Elizabeth dying on the Ground," like a she-dragon no one dares to touch, is sensational. "The Execution of Lady Jane Grey" is represented as taking place in a dungeon, which is badly inaccurate.
His 1835 "Assassination of the duke de Guise at Blois" is an exacting historical study was well a dramatic insight into human nature. Other important Delaroche works include "The Princes in the Tower" and the "La Jeune Martyr" (Young female Martyr floating dead on the Tiber).
Delaroche died on the 4th of November 1856.
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