Pierre-Athanase Chauvin

1774 – present

French painter. He was a pupil of Pierre Henri de Valenciennes in Paris; although a painter of classical landscapes, he did not inherit his master's aspirations to history painting. Chauvin's major debt to Valenciennes is his mastery of light and atmospheric recession. His first known work, the Banks of the Anio, near Rome (1807; Boulogne-Billancourt, Bibliothèque Marmottan), executed three years after he settled permanently in Rome, indicates that he did learn from direct observation of nature. The picture also displays Chauvin's picturesque form of Neo-classicism which proved to be extremely popular. Chauvin exhibited at the Salon from 1793 and by 1806 had become a pensioned protégé of Talleyrand. By 1814 his works could be found in major collections in Rome and Paris, and he was well respected by the international artistic circle in Rome. Ingres painted portraits of Chauvin and his wife in 1814 (Bayonne, Musée Bonnat).

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