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Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre

French, 1714 - 1789

BiographyBorn Paris, 6 March 1714; Died Paris, 15 May 1789.

French painter, printmaker, draughtsman and administrator. Although he painted a number of rustic genre scenes and was an occasional designer of vases and picture frames, he was principally active as a painter of large-scale history and religious works. In this aspect of his output he forms a link in the 18th-century tradition of French history painting that runs from Jean Jouvenet to the Neo-classicism of Jacques-Louis David.

Pierre’s father, a wealthy Parisian jeweller, consented to his artistic ambitions and provided financial security. Pierre studied with Charles-Joseph Natoire and won the Prix de Rome in 1734. The fresh, spirited quality of his etching Chinese Masquerade of the French Art Students in Rome (San Francisco, CA, Achenbach Found. Graph. A.), dated 1735, belies the fact that he probably did not arrive in Rome in time to witness the February carnival. Under the directors of the Académie de France in Rome, Nicolas Vleughels and Jean-François de Troy, Pierre worked in two modes: large-scale figure paintings of ideal subjects, and engravings of the Italian poor (Figures dessinées d’après nature du bas-peuple à Rome; Paris, 1736). The latter works reflect a growing interest in genre subjects, as evidenced also in the work of Jean-Siméon Chardin, Edme Bouchardon and Vleughels himself, who urged the French students to sketch the Italian countryside. Pierre was considered a student of great promise, and attracted patrons and protectors while in Rome (e.g. Claude-Alexandre de Villeneuve, Comte de Vence (1702–after 1745), and the ‘Duc de Saint-Aignan’, probably Paul-Hippolyte de Beauvilliers, the French Ambassador).

Pierre returned to Paris in 1740 and rose to the rank of professor in the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture by 1744. His submissions to his first Salon in 1741—The Schoolteacher (Auxerre, Mus. A. & Hist.), Psyche Abandoned by Cupid and a bambocciata (both untraced)—adumbrated the prolific variety of Pierre’s work. His morceau de réception for the Académie Royale in 1742, Hercules Killing Diomedes (Montpellier, Mus. Fabre), promoted Pierre as the spiritual heir to Charles Le Brun, whose legendary début occurred exactly a century earlier with a painting of the same subject (Nottingham, Castle Mus.). Drawing on multiple sources, Pierre fashioned a range of styles that he applied to different artistic tasks. His earlier religious and history paintings often referred to the dynamic figures and movement of Italian Baroque art, while for mythological subjects he consistently employed a light palette, smooth facture and graceful Rococo forms learnt from Natoire. From his early genre works Pierre developed the reformed mode of his mature religious paintings, which possess a more severe composition and austere palette, akin to the Le Nain brothers or Pierre Subleyras, whom he admired.

The programme of the Bâtiments du Roi to restore noble principles and didactic aims to the fine arts in France provided a showcase for Pierre’s history painting. In 1747 he was the youngest of 11 Academicians selected to participate in a state-sponsored history painting competition. Pierre replaced his original entry, Rinaldo and Armida (untraced), with Aurora Leaving Tithonus (Poitiers, Mus. B.-A.) after unfavourable public response—one of many examples of his sensitivity to the critical reception of his work. From 1746 the reforming art critic Etienne La Font de Saint-Yenne criticized Pierre for painting bambocciate, but other critics applauded his rustic genre scenes. Pierre appears to have followed La Font de Saint-Yenne’s call (Réflexions sur quelques causes de l’état présent de la peinture en France, The Hague, 1747, p. 8) for original subjects in history painting with his Murder of St Thomas à Becket (Paris, Notre-Dame-des-Champs), commissioned for the church of St Louis-du-Louvre and shown at the Salon of 1748. In this rare theme from English medieval history the spare setting, subdued palette and simplified forms appear as chastened correctives to the elaborate rhythms and decorative colour of the contemporary Rococo mode. Pierre’s Death of Harmonia (New York, Met.), exhibited at the Salon of 1751, may be the only depiction of this subject from Valerius Maximus’s Factorum ac dictorum memorabilium prior to the French Revolution (1789–95), by which time Greek and Roman stories of heroic virtue had become very popular. To communicate the painting’s tribute to bravery both the Salon livret and the engraving by Charles-Nicolas Cochin II included the translated text. The densely packed, bulky figures suggest a Rubensian or Bolognese model, and although the gestures and action recall 18th-century Italian martyrdoms, the clear palette, smooth brushwork and expressive types speak of French academic concerns. The Harmonia was enthusiastically received in Paris and its image appeared on Chelsea porcelain. Eriksen pointed to a series of vases designed by Pierre and engraved by Claude-Henri Watelet, Pierre’s major collector, in 1749 as evidence of his early taste for the Neo-classical.

In 1748 Pierre was commissioned to decorate two cupolas (now badly damaged) in St Roch, Paris. Although critics mistakenly described his technique as fresco, Pierre painted on canvas that was then glued into place. The unveiling in 1756 was a celebrated event, with the Marquis de Marigny and Madame de Pompadour making public visits. In 1752 Pierre received the prestigious and lucrative position of Premier Peintre to Louis-Philippe, Duc d’Orléans (1725–85). Seeking to restore the lustre of his family’s name, the duke commissioned Pierre to decorate his residences, the Palais-Royal in Paris and the château of Saint-Cloud (both works destr.). As one of the few large-scale decorators in mid-18th-century France, Pierre satisfied many critics’ desire for a modern artist to repeat the intellectual and physical exploits of the Renaissance and Baroque masters. His consistent productivity indicates that he had a workshop or assistants. Pierre’s contribution to the Salon, 1761, a large Descent from the Cross , aroused controversy. A sombre work of restrained composition and great attention to naturalistic detail, the Descent forms part of the link between the history painting of Jean Jouvenet and that of Jacques-Louis David and Jean-Baptiste Regnault. The critic Denis Diderot accused Pierre of plagiarizing Annibale Carracci’s Descent from the Cross (London, N.G.), then in the Orléans collection, and of constantly retouching his work. Pierre last exhibited at the Salon, 1763.

In 1770 Pierre attained the highest posts available to an artist in France. He was appointed Premier Peintre du Roi in succession to François Boucher and Director of the Académie Royale. Henceforth he concentrated on his various administrative duties and assisted the comte d’Angiviller, Directeur des Bâtiments du Roi, in the official programme to promote a didactic public art. Pierre also belonged to an independent society, the Rendez-vous de la République des Lettres, which was banned in 1783 by d’Angiviller as a threat to the Académie Royale. Condemned for his authority in the Académie and wrongly associated with Madame de Pompadour, Pierre was long neglected in art-historical studies. Conisbee restored meaning to Pierre’s works by placing them within the context of the tradition of French religious painting. At the end of the 20th century Pierre’s oeuvre was still being defined as works were rediscovered and attributions made and challenged.

Alisa Luxenberg. "Pierre, Jean-Baptiste." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T067506 (accessed March 7, 2012).

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