Jean-Joseph Taillasson

Jean-Joseph Taillasson (French: [tɑjasɔ̃]; 6 July 1745 – 11 November 1809[2]) was a French history painter and portraitist, draftsman, and art critic.

Virgil reading the Aeneid to Augustus and Octavia,[1] by Jean-Joseph Taillasson, 1787, an early neoclassical painting (National Gallery, London

Biography

Taillasson was born at Blaye, near Bordeaux.[3] His poem "Le Danger des règles dans les Arts" was noted with approval by the Danish visitor to Paris, Tønnes Christian Bruun-Neergaard, and an elegy "Sur la Nuit", he thought, seemed fit to soften the least sensitive heart.[4] He matured his talent in the Paris ateliers of Joseph-Marie Vien (from 1764)[5] and Nicolas Bernard Lépicié and, having won third place in the Prix de Rome competition, 1769, spent four years, 1773–77, in Italy. At his return to Paris he set an early example of neoclassicism.

His Observations sur quelques grands peintres[6] offered anti-academic advice somewhat at variance with his own manner; some of the collected observations had previously appeared in the Journal des Arts.[7] He died in Paris.

Selected works
  • Self Portrait, Musée du Louvre
  • Jeune Homme, vêtu d'une robe, levant les bras, Musée du Louvre
  • La Nymphe surprise, Musée des Augustins, Toulouse
  • Timoléon à qui les Syracusiens amènent des étrangers, Musée Ingres, Montauban; another version is at the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Tours.
  • Un Vieillard, assis, lisant, Musée du Louvre
  • Vieillard drapé, debout, vu de dos, Musée du Louvre.
  • Claude-Louis, comte de Saint-Germain (1707-1778), 1777 Musée national de Versailles
  • La Naissance de Louis XIII, 1782 Musée des Beaux-Arts, Pau
  • La Madeleine au désert, 1784 Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
  • Ulysse et Néoptolème enlevant à Philoctète les flèches d'Hercule, 1784 Musée des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux; this was his morceau de reception at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture.
  • Sabinus et Eponina découverts par les soldats de Vespasien 1787[8]
  • Virgil reading the 'Aeneid' to Augustus and Octavia, 1787 (National Gallery, London)
  • Léandre et Héro, 1789 Musée des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux
  • "Seigneur! Voyez ces yeux" (Cleopatra of Syria is discovered by Rodogune to have poisoned the nuptial cup, a scene from Pierre Corneille's Rodogune (1644), 1791 Boston Museum of Fine Arts; Tønnes Christian Bruun-Neergaard considered that it had established the painter's reputation, and remarked that it had belonged to Citoyen Godefroy, a well-known amateur, who auction dsaletranspired in 1794.[9]
  • Pauline, femme de Sénèque, rappelée à la vie, 1791 Musée du Louvre
  • Olympias, 1799[8]
  • Andromache, 1800[8]
  • Rhadamate et Zénobie, 1806[8]
  • Spring (or Flora) leading Cupid back to Nature (Bowes Museum, County Durham, UK)

Notes
  1. The anecdote, in which the poet read the passage in Book VI in praise of Octavia's late son Marcellus, and Octavia fainted with grief, was recorded in the late fourth-century vita of Virgil by Aelius Donatus.
  2. Cyclopedia.
  3. John Denison Champlin, Charles Callahan Perkins, Cyclopedia of Painters and Paintings (1887) s.v. "Taillasson, Jean Joseph".
  4. (Bruun-Neergaard, Sur la situation des beaux arts en France: ou lettres d'un Danois a son ami (pp. 140-41, under the date 12 germinal an 9 [2 April 1801]).
  5. "Taillasson , très-bon compositeur" remarked Bruun-Neergaard.
  6. Full title, Observations sur quelques grands peintres, dans lesquelles on cherche à fixer les caractères distinctifs de leur talent, avec un précis de leur Vie. (Paris, Duminil-Lesueur) 1807.
  7. Remarked on by Bruun-Neergaard; see also Debra Schrishuhn, "The Observations Of Jean-Joseph Taillasson: Anti-Academic Admonitions From A Seasoned Academician" Proceedings Of The Consortium On Revolutionary Europe(1997:651-58).
  8. Cyclopedia
  9. Bruun-Neergaard 1802:141.
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