Sébastien Bourdon

There he studied the paintings of masters such as Nicolas Poussin, Claude Lorrain and Caravaggio.

[2] In 1648, Bourdon was one of the founders of the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture and was elected as one of the original twelve elders in charge of its running.

Bourdon's facility rendered him adept at portraiture, whether in a dashing Rubens manner[4] or in intimate, sympathetic bust-length or half-length portraits isolated against plain backgrounds that set a formula for middle-class portraiture for the rest of the century,[5] landscapes in the manner of Gaspar Dughet or capricci of ruins, mythological "history painting" like other members of Poussin's circle[6] or the genre subjects of the Dutch Bamboccianti who were working in Rome.

Bourdon spent most of his working career outside France, where, though he was a founding member of the Académie royale, he was for long largely dismissed as a pasticheur, a situation partly rectified by a comprehensive exhibition in 2000 of his work at the Musée Fabre, Montpelier (whose collection includes a fine Lamentation painted in the last years of his life).

His success required the establishment of an extensive atelier, where his pupils included Nicolas-Pierre Loir and Pierre Mosnier.