Jean-Louis Laneuville

He was a gifted portraitist who made portraits of eminent persons of the French Revolution in a style similar to that of his teacher Jacques-Louis David.

Laneuville portrayed deputies to the Convention, including Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac (1792-3; Kunsthalle Bremen), Pierre-François-Joseph Robert and Joseph Delaunay (1793; Palace of Versailles) and Jules-François Paré (1795; Carnavalet Museum).

[2] Unlike his master David who was exiled in 1814 from France by Louis XVIII as a regicide, Laneuville exhibited work at the Salon until 1817.

His works from the French Revolution era are invariably painted along a very strict formula: they show the single sitter strongly delineated against a neutral background and depict the physiognomy and materials with painstaking precision.

He applied paint in such a polished manner that the brushwork is not visible and reduced his colors to simple contrasts of strong tones.

[2] While Laneuville almost exclusively made portraits of men, he was able to gain a commission from Thérésa Tallien, a rising star in Paris social circles following the termination of the Reign of Terror.

She had been imprisoned herself in the last days of the Terror as she was the mistress of Jean-Lambert Tallien, who had fallen in disgrace for his criticism of the bloody methods of the Terrorist regime.

A letter she was able to slip to her lover Jean-Lambert Tallien from her cell prompted him to mount the conspiracy that terminated the Reign of Terror.

It is likely that the painful memories of the Terror it evoked (especially that famous lock of hair cut before proceeding to the guillotine) were still too fresh for the public.