Oil painting -> List of Painters ->Charles Le Brun

Charles Le Brun

Early Days: Charles Le Brun Born in Paris, he attracted the notice of Chancellor Seguier, who placed him at the age of eleven in the studio of Simon Vouet. He was also a pupil of François Perrier. At fifteen he received commissions from Cardinal Richelieu, in the execution of which he displayed an ability which obtained the generous commendations of Nicolas Poussin, in whose company Le Brun started for Rome in 1642.

Career:

The nature of his emphatic and pompous talent was in harmony with the taste of the king, who, full of admiration at the paintings by Le Brun for his triumphal entry into Paris (1660) and his decorations at the Chateau Vaux le Vicomte (1661), commissioned him to execute a series of subjects from the history of Alexander. The first of these, "Alexander and the Family of Darius," so delighted Louis XIV that he at once ennobled Le Brun (December, 1662), who was also created Premier Peintre du Roi (First Painter to His Majesty) with a pension of 12,000 livres, the same amount as he had yearly received in the service of the magnificent Fouquet. The King had declared him "the greatest French artist of all time".

From this date all that was done in the royal palaces was directed by Le Brun. In 1663, he became director of the Academie royale de peinture et de sculpture, where he laid the basis of academicism and became the all-powerful, peerless master of seventeenth century French art. It was during this period that he dedicated a series of works to the history of Alexander the Great (The Battles of Alexander the Great), and he did not miss the opportunity to make a stronger connection between the magnificence of Alexander and that of the great King. While he was working on The Battles, Le Brun's style became much more personal, revealing the essence of Le Brun as he moved away from the ancient masters that influenced him.

The works of the gallery of Apollo in the Louvre were interrupted in 1677 when he accompanied the king to Flanders (on his return from Lille he painted several compositions in the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye), and finally - for they remained unfinished at his death - by the vast labours of Versailles, where he reserved for himself the Halls of War and Peace (Salons de la Guerreand de la Paix, 1686), the Ambassadors' Staircase, and the Great Hall of Mirrors (Galerie des Glaces, 1679–1684. Le Brun's decoration is not only a work of art, it is the definitive monument of a reign.