Pierre-Paul Prud'hon

Pierre-Paul Prud'hon (French pronunciation: [pjɛʁ pɔl pʁydɔ̃], 4 April 1758 – 16 February 16, 1823) was a French Neo-classical painter and draughtsman best known in his own time for his allegorical paintings and portraits, now for his drawings. He painted a portrait of each of Napoleon's two wives.

Not to be confused with the anarchist philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.

Pierre-Paul Prud'hon
Prud'hon's only known self-portrait, c. 1788–1790
Born	(1758-04-04)4 April 1758 Cluny, Saône-et-Loire, France
Died	16 February 1823(1823-02-16) (aged 64) Paris, France
Nationality	French
Known for	Painting, drawing
Notable work	Madame Georges Anthony and Her Two Sons
Movement	Neoclassicism, Romanticism

He was an early influence on Théodore Géricault. After 1803 he worked so closely with artist Constance Mayer on many paintings, that it is almost impossible to tell where the contribution of one ends and the other begins.^[1]

Biography

Justice and Divine Vengeance Pursuing Crime, 1808. The darkness and the sprawling naked figure anticipate Théodore Géricault's painting The Raft of the Medusa.^[2]

Pierre-Paul Prud'hon was born in Cluny, Saône-et-Loire, France. He received his artistic training in the French provinces He married Jeanne Pennet in 1778 in Cluny. They had six children.^[3]He went to Italy when he was twenty-six years old to continue his education.

In Paris he became an enthusiastic supporter of the Revolution and made drawings of mythological and republican allegories which were engraved and published by his friend Jacques-Louis Copia.^[4]

Prud’hon made some portraits during this period including one of Louis de Saint-Just, one of the key figures in the Reign of Terror.^[5]

At the fall of Robespierre,in 1794, Prud’hon found it prudent to leave Paris. He spent two years in Franche-Comte, painting portraits and making book illustrations.

In 1796, it was safe to return to Paris. He decorated rooms in some private mansions with allegories of art, philosophy, wealth, and pleasure.^[6]

Prud’hon’s Portrait of Empress Josephine shows her alone in the garden of her home, Malmaison.^[7]After the divorce of Napoleon and Josephine, he was also employed by Napoleon's second wife Marie-Louise.

Prud'hon was at times clearly influenced by Neo-classicism, at other times by Romanticism. He was appreciated by other artists and writers, including Stendhal, Delacroix, Millet and Baudelaire, for his chiaroscuro and convincing realism. He painted Crucifixion (1822) for St. Etienne's Cathedral in Metz; it now hangs in the Louvre.

The young Théodore Géricault had painted copies of work by Prud'hon, whose "thunderously tragic pictures" include his masterpiece, Justice and Divine Vengeance Pursuing Crime, where oppressive darkness and the compositional base of a naked, sprawled corpse obviously anticipate Géricault's painting The Raft of the Medusa.^[2]

Gallery

• 
  Male Nude Study, National Gallery of Art
• 
  Louise Antoinette Lannes, Duchess of Montebello
• 
  Portrait of Louis de Saint-Just, 1793
• 
  Nicolas Perchet, 1795, Princeton University Art Museum
• 
  Female Nude, 1800
• 
  Portrait of Joséphine de Beauharnais, at the Louvre, Paris, 1805
• 
  Portrait of Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, 1817
• 
  Study for The Dream of Happiness (with Constance Mayer), 1819