Roux family (marine painters)

[4] In 1764, Joseph published a folio of twelve Mediterranean charts which were used for a number of years after their publication.

Two such works, oil paintings titled Bonhomme Richard vs Serapis and Naval Engagement between a British East Indiaman and a French Warship, exist at the Peabody Essex Museum and showcase Joseph's skill as a painter.

[8] He grew up in his father's hydrographic shop where he most likely picked up a great deal of nautical knowledge.

He ended up taking over the hydrographic business of an uncle only a short distance from the one his father ran.

[13][14] He used the same image his grandfather had introduced in his hydrographic shop and that became associated with the Roux family, that of the two little men, one using a telescope and the other using an octant.

It was in Paris where he was commissioned by Admiral Jean-Baptiste Philibert Wilaumez to create 40 watercolors of the vessels on which he had served or been involved with.

Frédéric was also commissioned to make 23 watercolors dedicated to the Duc d’Orléans, Ferdinand Philippe, which were finished in 1831.

[20] Frédéric did not solely devote himself to the hydrographic and painting business, but instead divided his time with adventures, traveling and generally enjoying the pleasures life had to offer.

He ventured a few times back to Marseilles, but spent the rest of his life in Havre, where he died in January 1870.

[23] He was so skilled that it was said that François had “assimilated the science of the ship as if he were both builder and sailor.”[24] Of particular interest was a series of watercolors he created between the late 1860s and 1882 that illustrated the “development of naval and merchant vessels since the last decade of the eighteenth century.”[25] These were given to the Louvre, but not all made it and so an exact count of how many were created is unknown.