Jean-Bernard, abbé Le Blanc (1707–1781, Paris) was a French art critic and one of the Parisian literati.
Through his patron Mme de Pompadour, he was appointed historiographer of the Bâtiments du Roi, the defender of state expenditures and official French policy in the arts, and was also an advocate before the Parlement of Paris.
[1] Le Blanc had been invited to England by a nobleman in 1737 and remained for a year and a half, passing easily at every level of society, and expressing his observations in ninety-two letters that concerned the English almost entirely, and concentrated on social observation, with a minority of letters on politics and literature.
The results were widely read and approved as the judicious appraisal of particular and characteristic English types, viewed dispassionately.
Le Blanc was an early champion of Chardin, and his two letters on the Paris salons, of 1747 and 1753 are a guide to enlightened contemporary taste and the defense of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, whose members had the exclusive right to exhibit at the Paris salons.