Jean-Victor Bertin

Bio

Bertin entered the School of the Royal Academy of Painting in 1785, at the age of eighteen, studying first under Gabriel François Doyen and then from 1788 with Pierre Henri de Valenciennes, who had returned from Italy four years earlier. He exhibited at the Salon between 1793 and 1842, receiving a mèdaille de premiÉre classe in 1808, and the Legion d’Honneur in 1817. In 1801 Bertin proposed the creation of the Prix de Rome for historical landscape pictures, but it was not until his master Valenciennes was able to obtain an endowment for the prize in 1816 that it became firmly established, with the first prize awarded to Michallon in 1817. At the Restoration, Bertin was fortunate in being commissioned to join the group of artists working on the redecorations of the Grand Trianon and the Galerie de Diane at Fontainebleau, begun in 1819. Boisselier, Enfantin and Rémond were among his many pupils, of whom the most famous was Corot, who spent five years in his studio after leaving that of Michallon. Many of Bertin’s early works have been lost but some of these compositions are known through engravings by Landon and others.

Unlike Bidauld, Bertin had already established his reputation by the time he journeyed to Italy, where he remained from 1806-08, painting a number of views, mostly of the Roman Campagna. Throughout his career, Bertin produced formal historical landscapes as well as plein air oil sketches that earlier drew on the work of his contemporaries for inspiration and later incorporated elements from his Italian journey. His sketches from nature were often characterised by heavy impasto, contrasting with the more porcelain like surface of his finished works.