Guillaume Guillon-Lethière
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Guillaume Guillon Lethière (January 10, 1760 – April 22, 1832) was a French neoclassical painter.
Born in Guadalupe in 1760 to a French colonial official named Pierre Guillon[1] and a disenfranchised "mulatto" mother,[2] Lethière has been often written about in the context of French colonial history and the French Revolution.
At 14 years old, he moved from Guadalupe to France, and by 17 he had become the student of François Doyen at the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture.[3] Lethière won second prize in the Prix de Rome of 1784 for his painting Woman of Canaan at the Feet of Christ. He entered again two years later, and while he did not win, he succeeding in receiving support to travel to Rome where he further developed his neoclassical style. Lethière remained in Rome for several years, and returned to Paris in 1791 to open a painting studio in direct competition with Jacques-Louis David.[4] In 1818 Lethière was finally elected and also awarded the Légion d’honneur, and a year later he became a professor at the École des Beaux-Arts.[5]
[edit] References
- ^ http://www.guadeloupe-fr.com/articleDestinationGuadeloupe/10475/
- ^ Frontline: Guillaume Guillon Lethiere
- ^ http://www.guadloupe-fr.com/articleDestinationGuadeloupe/10475/
- ^ Simon Lee, "Lethière [Lethiers; Letiers], Guillaume [Guillon]" Grove Art Online. Oxford University Press, [14-02-2007], http://www.groveart.com/
- ^ Ibid.
[edit] Further reading
- B. Foucart, G. Capy and G. Flrent Laballe, Guillaume Guillon Lethière (Paris and Point-à-Pitre, 1991).
- Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, "Revolutionary Sons, White Fathers and Creole Difference: Guillaume Guillon Lethière's Oath of the Ancestors of 1822" Yale French Studies 101 (2002): pp. 201-226.
- T. Oriol, Les Hommes célèbres de La Guadeloupe (Basse-Terre, 1935), pp. 39–47.
| Cultural offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Pierre-Adrien Pâris |
Director of the French Academy in Rome 1807–1816 |
Succeeded by Charles Thévenin |
