Jean-Joseph Taillasson
Place Born
BordeauxPlace Died
ParisBio
Both a painter and a scholar of some renown, Taillasson’s career has been overshadowed by those of his contemporaries David and Vincent, whom he knew as fellow students of Vien. Entering the latter’s studio in 1764, he won a third prize in the contest for the prix de Rome of 1769 with Achilles placing the body of Hector at the feet of Patroclus. He spent three years in Italy, studying at the Academy from 1772-1775, at the same time as Vincent, although the now outdated style of the ineffective Director, Natoire, had little influence on him. Like David and Peyron, with whom he may be most directly compared, he was profoundly influenced by the antique. Taillasson’s first exhibited work, Two Soldiers carrying the body of Lausus to his father Mezancus, King of the Tyrrhenians (for which a sketch was exhibited at the 1785 Salon), was shown at the Salon de la Correspondance in 1780. Earlier he had undoubtedly been influenced by the teachers at the School at Bordeaux, the city of his birth to which he retained a lifelong attachment and to whose Academy he was elected a member (the Musée des Beaux Arts of that city has his very beautiful Elysean Tomb). In addition to painting grand scale historical subjects he also painted a handful of portraits and several religious subjects, although none of the latter were exhibited during and after the revolution.