After the February Revolution of 1848 was made head of National Museums and Director of the Louvre, where he introduced important innovations in the preservation, classification and arrangement of the collections.

He was born in the military camp at Boulogne, where his father was Nicolas Jeanron, a shoemaker for the troops of the Emperor.

[2] He first studied at the Bourbon college where he met many republican activists, including the groups led by Philippe Buonarroti, who had escaped from a death sentence in Belgium.

[3] He undertook commissions of paintings for churches in Paris such as Saint-Vincent-de-Paul and Saint-Louis-en-l'Ile, and made landscapes in the style of the Barbizon school.

Throughout the July Monarchy (1830-1848) he exhibited realist pictures that illustrated his views in the Salons, and also spoke, published and discussed his ideas with many artists.

A highly educated person, with deep knowledge of art history, he was open to a broad range of styles.

[6] Jeanron campaigned to include workers in completing the different sectors of the Louvre, hoping to spread the word that the museum was a place where all were welcome, and tried to obtain more space for the exhibits.

He displayed works by painters such as Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin and the Le Nain brothers who depicted plebeian subjects that would have greater appeal to the working class and the growing middle class, as opposed to the more aristocratic themes of painters like Hyacinthe Rigaud or Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun.

He also clarified that the Musée du Luxembourg would be a museum of contemporary art, with constantly changing exhibits, while the Louvre would focus more on the past.

He commissioned Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863), whom he greatly admired, to complete the central composition of the Apollon gallery, which had been unfinished since the 17th century.

Jeanron's work as a genre painter, typically depicting scenes from everyday life, was strongly influenced by Dutch artists.

[5] Une scène de Paris (1833) shows a family of paupers, the father wearing a cockade in his hat, apparently starving in the street while a bourgeois couple strolls away.