Jean-Baptiste Descamps

Jean-Baptiste Descamps , born the August 28th 1714 with Dunkirk and dead the June 30th 1791 with Rouen, is a painter and writer French.

Its life and its work

He studies under Antoine Coypel, his maternal uncle, and under Nicolas de Largillière, with which he will work on the tables carried out for the sacring of Louis XV. After having lived with Paris and having travelled in Flanders, its life takes an unexpected turn when, in way for the England where the Van Loo invited it to come to exert its art, it makes a halt in Rouen where the scholar the Corner one of Cideville will be able to convince it to remain in Normandy. Established in Rouen, it bases there, on the model of the Royal Dublin Society and on the base of the ideas of the philosophers of the Lumières, the school of the Art schools of Rouen which proposes free courses of drawing. He wrote about this school, which will play a central role in the development of pictorial arts in Normandy, a report which will be crowned by the French Academy.

The style that it affectionate is that of the Flemish Masters, to which is devoted a big part of its first work on the Vie of the Flemish, German painters and Dutch , published between 1753 and 1763. In its picturesque Voyage from the Flanders and the Brabant , published in 1769, it draws up a meticulous nomenclature of paintings, sculptures and objets d'art which it observed during its peregrinations; it marks of a star those which it thinks most likely to interest its readers and adds to their intention an extendible chart and a schedule of the public cars. “The Italy only, writes it in its foreword, can override the richnesses which one finds in the churches of the Flanders. ” The preface writer of the 2nd edition of the Voyage , appeared in 1838, deplores however the disappearance of many works described by Descamps, carried in the storm of the Révolution and the Napoleonean invasion.

Several tables of Jean-Baptiste Descamps are preserved in the museums of the Art schools of Rouen and Dunkirk.

Works

Self-portrait , Rouen, museum of the Art schools
the Pupil , Rouen, museum of the Art schools
the Trader , Rouen, museum of the Art schools
Country cauchoise sitting with its family, Paris, 3Ecole Nationale Sup3erieure of the Art schools
Portrait of the artist in his workshop , Rouen, museum of the Art schools

Publications

Life of the Flemish, German painters and hollandois, with portraits engraved in size-shower, an indication of their principal works, & reflections on their various manners (1753-1763) (4 volumes); Republication: Minkoff, Geneva, 1972.
On the utility of the establishments of the free schools of drawing in favor of the trades (1767)
picturesque Voyage from the Flanders and the Brabant, with reflections relative with arts and some engravings (1769)

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