Hippolyte Bellangé

1800 – 1866

French painter and printmaker. He was enrolled briefly at the Lycée Bonaparte, Paris, and at 16 he entered the studio of Antoine-Jean Gros, where Nicolas-Toussaint Charlet, Richard Parkes Bonington and Paul Delaroche were also pupils. Influenced by Charlet in particular, in 1817 Bellangé worked as a commercial illustrator, employing the still new process of lithography, notably for the publisher Godefroy Engelmann. Bellangé's independent works can only be traced, however, from 1822 onwards. Between 1823 and 1835 he published 15 albums of lithographs devoted to the patriotic military subjects that had long attracted popular favour, and he turned increasingly to representing them in oil. Bellangé devoted himself exclusively to battle-pieces. In 1824, he received a second class medal for an historical picture, and in 1834 the decoration of the Legion of Honour, of which Order he was made an officer in 1861. He also gained a prize at the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1855.

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