After the Salon of 1824, he was bestowed with the rank of Knight in the order of the Legion d'Honneur by Charles X of France and offered a professorship at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts: a position in which he remained until his death in 1853.

Blondel's 1814 painting La Circassienne au Bain became infamous during the early part of the 20th century for being the subject of the largest claim for financial compensation made against the White Star Line, for a single item of luggage lost by a passenger on the RMS Titanic.

[8] On arrival at the Villa Medici in Rome in 1809, Blondel struck up a friendship with fellow student Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres which, as correspondence between the two artists demonstrated, lasted for the rest of their lives.

Together with his second wife, Louise Emilie Delafontaine, Blondel stayed at the Villa Medici as a guest of Ingres for four months in 1839, during which time the three of them undertook a lengthy sketching tour of the Marches and Umbria.

[10] By the mid-1820s, his many notable achievements had firmly established Blondel as a history painter of great renown and he was accordingly rewarded with many public commissions for paintings and frescoes in important buildings, including museums, palaces and churches.

[12] In January 1913, a claim was filed in New York against the White Star Line, by RMS Titanic survivor Mauritz Håkan Björnström-Steffansson, for financial compensation resulting from the loss of the painting.

The amount of the claim was $100,000 ($2.4 million equivalent in 2014); a valuation which reflected Blondel's significant artistic status at that time and making it by far the most highly valued single item of luggage or cargo lost as a result of the sinking.