Background
Prud’hon was born in Cluny, Saone-et-Loire, France, on April 4, 1758. He was the third son of a stonemason. Both his parents died when he was a young boy.
Prud’hon was born in Cluny, Saone-et-Loire, France, on April 4, 1758. He was the third son of a stonemason. Both his parents died when he was a young boy.
The monks of the abbey undertook Pierre-Paul Prud’hon's education, and by the aid of the bishop of Macon, in 1774 Pierre Paul Prud'hon went to Dijon to study painting. He was such a successful student, that in 1780 a nobleman of the district offered him to go to Paris to study at the Royal Academy (now Académie des Beaux-Arts). In 1784 Prud'hon received the Prix de Rome, an award given by the academy to allow promising artists to study in Italy. He resided in Italy until 1788.
Prud'hon returned to Paris in 1789. There he lived through the Revolution in poverty, earning a scant living with portraits and graphic work. In 1791 he began showing his paintings in the Paris exhibitions (Salons). During the Revolutionary turmoil of the early 1790s he retreated to Burgundy, but after 1796 he lived in Paris and by 1800 was moving in the highest circles surrounding Napoleon, the new ruler of France. Pierre-Paul Prud'hon was appointed drawing master to Empress Josephine, Napoleon's first wife, and to Empress Marie Louise, Napoleon's second wife. He also enjoyed substantial patronage from the Napoleonic government for the execution of various art projects.
Over the course of Pierre-Paul Prud'hon's career, painting in France was pervaded by a severe neoclassicism and ruled by Jacques Louis David, the painter who brought the neoclassic style to its culmination and who dominated the arts in France between 1785 and 1815. Prud'hon was well aware of the prevailing style, and one of his best friends at this time was Antonio Canova, the leading neoclassic sculptor of the period. However, French painting was turning away from the precise draftsmanship and sculptural solidity of neoclassicism even before 1815. Within this context of shifting styles and a transitional period, Pierre-Paul Prud'hon developed an individualistic style which stands apart from the classicism of his period. His works combined the soft, decorative painting of the rococo and also the drama of the 19th-century romanticism.
In the Union of Love and Friendship, an allegorical work of 1793, Prud'hon made obvious reference to classical antiquity. After Robespierre's fall (1794), Pierre-Paul Prud'hon sheltered in the rustic security of a village in Franche-Comté, where he spent two years painting portraits (Madame Anthony and Her Two Children, 1796, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon) and creating illustrations for the publisher Didot. After the establishment of the Directory (1795), he returned to Paris, coolly received by Jacques Louis David and his followers. His design for a ceiling intended for the Louvre, Wisdom and Truth, Descending to Earth, Dispel the Darkness That Covers It (1799), won him the commission and the privilege of lodgings at the Louvre.
Through his friendship with Nicolas Frochot, the powerful prefect of the department of the Seine, Prud'hon received important commissions and was brought into the orbit of Bonaparte. After the establishment of the empire in 1804 the artist was in demand as a portraitist for the imperial family (Portrait of the Empress Josephine, 1805, Louvre). By 1808 Pierre-Paul Prud'hon had moved decisively in the direction of early romanticism.
The fall of the Napoleonic regime in 1815 had an impact on Prud'hon's artistic career, and his later years were marked by personal unhappiness as well.
The Source
Arts, Wealth, Pleasure and Philosophy: Pleasure
Academic Male Nude
Venus und Adonis
Young Naiad Tickled by the Cupids
Seated Female Nude
The union of love and friendship
Justice and Divine Vengeance pursuing Crime
Male Nude Grasping his Wrists
Head of divine vengeance
Portrait of Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninck and his family
Portrait of Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord
The First Kiss of Love
Drawing of Female Nude with charcoal and chalk
Marguerite-Marie Lagnier, ten years old
Jean-Baptiste Landel
Female nude - Poetry
The King of Rome
Russian general A.I. Osterman Tolstoi
Study for " Venus And Adonis"
Academic Male Nude
The Glorification of the government of Burgundy
Arts, Wealth, Pleasure and Philosophy: Wealth
Portrait of the Empress Josephine
Venus, Hymen and Love
Music
Portrait of Josephine de Beauharnais
Seated Female Nude by a Fountain
The Afternoon
Portrait of Princess Catherine Talleyrand
The conversation of Napoleon and Francois II
Seated Female Nude
Portrait of Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord
Female Nude Reclining
Drawing of Female Nude with charcoal and chalk
Reclining female nude
David Jonston
Seated Male Nude
Josephine Bonaparte (study)
Drawing of Female Nude with charcoal and chalk
The Noon
Monsieur Lavallee
Venus Bathing (Innocence)
Seated Nude Figure
Portrait of Constance Mayer
Drawing of Female Nude with charcoal and chalk
Female Nude Raising her Arm
Head of Plutus, God of Wealth
Death of Viala
Portrait of François Devosge
Portrait of a Young Woman
Female nude
Crucifixion
Innocence Preferring Love to Wealth
Academic Male Nude
Standing Female Nude
Male Nude Pointing
Drawing of Female Nude with charcoal and chalk
Daphnis and Chloe
Study for "The soul breaking the bonds that attach to the land"
Drawing of Female Nude with charcoal and chalk
Love Seduces Innocence, Pleasure Entraps, and Remorse Follows
Male Nude Raising his Arm
Elisa Bonaparte, Napoleon's eldest sister
Male nude
Female Nude Leaning
Giovanni Battista Sommariva
Bathing Venus
The Torch of Venus
Female Nude Raising her Arm
Louis Antoine de Saint Just
The Night
Arts, Wealth, Pleasure and Philosophy: Philosophy
Arts, Wealth, Pleasure and Philosophy: Arts
Andromache and Astyanax
Portrait of a woman with her child
Female Nude Leaning
Psyche transported to Heaven
Family portrait of Madame Anthony and her children
Young Zephyr balancing above water
Female Nude from Behind
Bust of female nude
Madame Copia
Triumph of Bonaparte and Peace (Sketch)
Justice and Divine Vengeance pursuing Crime (study)
Portrait of Georges Anthony
Academic Male Nude
Louise Antoinette Lannes, Duchess of Montebello
Portrait of Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord
Assumption of the Virgin
Arnauld de Beaufort
Arts, Wealth, Pleasure and Philosophy
Lavinie Barbier-Walbonne
Female Nude Bound
Male Nude Turning
The wisdom and truth
Adonis
Untitled
The Man in the Riding Habit
Etienne Renon de Franois
Dominique-Vivant Denon
The wealth
Portrait of Madame Péan de Saint-Gilles
The soul breaking the bonds that attach to the land
Madame Simon
Female Nude
Gian Battista Sommariva
Nicolas Perchet
Map of the Saône and Loire region in France
In 1778 Pierre-Paul Prud'hon married Jeanne Paugnet, the daughter of a notary, who was pregnant. The marriage was a miserably unhappy one from the start. Later his wife became mentally ill and he separated from her in 1803. Shortly thereafter a young painter, Constance Mayer, emerged in his life, at first as a pupil, then as his fellow worker and intimate companion. In 1821 Constance Mayer, who had been suffering from depression, committed suicide in his apartment at the Sorbonne.