Jean-Baptiste Charpentier

Bio

Jean-Baptiste Charpentier was never elected a member of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture and did not exhibit at the Salon until its restrictions on non-members were lifted in 1791. His exclusion was certainly no reflection on his obvious talents; there was, rather, a deliberate policy to give preference to the painters of history, however mediocre their abilities. He had obtained the appointment of “painter-in-ordinary” to the Duke of Penthiévre, an enormously wealthy member of a legitimated line of the House of Bourbon and had served as a professor at the Academy of Saint Luke from 1762. He is, however, best known as a genre painter choosing subjects with a distinctly “Dutch” or “Flemish” flavor which, while popular with the collecting public, were looked on with some disapproval by the artistic establishment.