Nicolas-André Monsiau

Bio

Monsiau’s first master at the Academy school was Peyron, who was later the unsuccessful challenger for the leadership of the neo-classical movement. The young artist was fortunate in finding a patron in the person of the Marquis de Corberon who paid the expenses of his trip to Rome, where he spent four years from 1776 at the Academy. His fellow students there included David (seven years his senior and the winner of the First Prize of 1774) and Valenciennes, who was later to elevate the art of landscape painting to new heights.

Unable to exhibit at the Royal Academy when he first returned to Paris at the end of 1780, he was keen, nonetheless, to demonstrate his talents and showed one painting at each of the Salons de la Correspondence of 1781 (Landscape with figures) and 1782 (Piquant effect of the light of a lamp). In 1787 he was agrée at the Academy with Alexander Breaking in Bucephalus and, two years later, was admitted as a full member with The Death of Agis. Monsiau was an accomplished draftsman and, unlike many of his contemporaries, was ready to exhibit his talents in a series of finished drawings of historical subjects at the Salons. In 1787, for example, he showed drawings titled The Triumph of Paul-Emile, The Death of Cato of Utica, and the Death of Phocion, while he showed The Death of Cleopatra at the Salon of 1789.

With the coming of the Revolution and the opening up of the Salons to non-Academicians, Monsiau responded to the challenge with a greater and broader range of entries. In 1791, among other works, he showed a portrait, a watercolor of Venus with her Family, a genre scene of a child playing cards, and our painting, the large scale Ulysses Returning to his Palace after Slaying the Lovers of Penelope, Ordering the Women to Remove their Bodies. He only exhibited two works in the next Salon, but in 1798 showed his Zeuxis Choosing His Models (See Fig.1. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto), inspired by Vincent’s splendid composition of the same title (Paris, Louvre, and variant Stair Sainty Matthiesen and Matthiesen Gallery until recently.).

Despite his stylistic preference for neo-classical froideur, which he did not wholly abandon for another decade, he was one of the first artists of David’s generation to embrace the painting of modern historical subjects. His 1802 Moliére reading Tartufe at the house of Ninon de Lenclos was one of the first such subject shown at the Salon and Vivant-Denon himself wrote (in a letter to the Emperor in 1810) that ‘Monsiau can be regarded as the creator’ of the Style Troubadour. Denon also noted the role of other painters and it is evident that the willingness of the younger generation to adopt a radical technical and stylistic approach separated them from Monsiau and other artists of his generation. In 1804 he became one of the first of the new school to choose an episode in the life of a modern artist (having earlier painted the Greek artist Zeuxis), exhibiting The Death of Raphael, and at the 1806 Salon Poussin escorting Cardinal Massini. After the restoration in 1814 he returned to neo-classical subject matter, producing fewer modern historical or literary subjects. He also painted a few portraits and genre scenes, showing for the last time in public at the Salon of 1833, four years before his death.