Jean-Baptiste Santerre

Jean-Baptiste Santerre (23 March 1651 – 21 November 1717)[1] was a French painter and draughtsman of the Style Louis XIV, known for his history paintings, portraits, and portrait-like genre subjects. Considerably influenced by Italian masters of the Bolognese school as well as his French contemporaries, Santerre nonetheless made an original contribution in his art, being among the first French painters to bring Netherlandish influences.

Jean-Baptiste Santerre
Self-Portrait, 1704, oil on canvas, Palace of Versailles
Born23 March 1651
Magny-en-Vexin
Died21 November 1717(1717-11-21) (aged 66)
Paris
NationalityFrench
Education
Known forpainting
MovementStyle Louis XIV

Born in Magny-en-Vexin near Pontoise, Santerre studied notably under the history painter Bon Boullogne, and trained by copying works by Old Masters. After achieving initial success as a portrait painter by the late 1690s, Santerre began to branch out into the fields of genre painting and, in which he combined the fantasy portrait of Northern tradition, as seen in the art of Rembrandt and Gerrit Dou, with the allegorical portrait, then fashionable in France. At the same time, he also painted history paintings and altarpieces of biblical and religious subjects, suffused with a strong erotic character; notable case of these is Susanna at the Bath of 1704, regarded among Santerre's best known works. Santerre's successes gained the attention from the French royalty, notably including King Louis XIV and Philippe II, Duke of Orléans; from 1715 and until his death, Santerre served as a court painter for the Duke of Orleans.

Santerre's work brought him a controversial reputation, in light of his association with the French Regency era; it was during the 19th and 20th centuries when it met a broader appreciation. Santerre is regarded as a precursor of the Rococo era painting, as well as of both Neoclassical and Romantic painting, and was said to be an influence on subsequent generations of artists during the said eras.[lower-alpha 1]

Life and work

Born in Magny-en-Vexin near Pontoise on 23 March 1651, Jean-Baptiste Santerre was the twelfth child of André Santerre, a merchant. He was apprenticed to the portrait painter François Lemaire (1620–1688), before entering the studio of the history painter Bon Boullogne.[11] Although he executed some history paintings, he began to specialize in portraits early in his career, influenced by his French contemporaries Hyacinthe Rigaud[12] and François de Troy;[13] at the same time, Santerre became among the first painters in France to bring Dutch and Flemish influences, notably from Rembrandt[14] and Anthony van Dyck.[15] In his art, Santerre made an original contribution by combining the fantasy portrait of Northern tradition with the allegorical portrait, then fashionable in French painting.[16][17]

Having been approved (agrée) into the Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1698, Santerre was accepted as full member (reçu) in October 1704, after presenting Susanna at the Bath, now in the Louvre, and an untraced portrait of the painter Noël Coypel; also in 1704, he exhibited some of his works at the Salon. Santerre's success at the Academy provided him official commissions for more conventional portraits, among them that of the mother of King Louis XV, Marie Adélaïde of Savoy, influenced by the elder Troy's portrait of the Duchess of Maine.[18] Beside from Susanna at the Bath and a Weeping Magdalen, Santerre's religious paintings notably include Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, a commission by King Louis XIV for the Chapel of Versailles that caused a scandal in ecclesiastical circles, given the subject's erotic character inspired by Bernini's statue.[19][20]

Towards 1712, Santerre received a pension from the King, as well as a studio and lodging in the Louvre. After Louis XIV's death in 1715, Santerre became an ordinary painter at the court of the Regent of France, the Duke of Orleans; among his later works are a portrait of the Regent now in the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, exhibiting an influence from Rigaud's portraiture, and a double portrait in the Palace of Versailles of the Regent and his mistress, Madame de Parabère, with the latter appearing as Minerva. Adam and Eve of c. 1716–1717, also believed to be a double portrait of the Regent and Madame de Parabère, turned out to be Santerre's last work, made shortly before his death on 21 November 1717; on his death, he was reputed to have destroyed a notebook of his nude studies, which he considered to be indecent.[17]

In culture

Santerre's death is the subject of a 1836 painting by Joseph-Léon-Roland de Lestang-Parade (1810–1881), first exhibited in Paris during that year's Salon and now hosted in the Museum of Fine Arts, Lyon.[21][22]

Notes
  1. Artists from subsequent generations, of whose Santerre was regarded as either a forerunner or influence, include Antoine Watteau,[2][3] Jean-Marc Nattier,[4][5] François Boucher,[6] Pierre-Antoine Baudouin, Jean-Honoré Fragonard,[7][8][9] and Pierre-Paul Prud'hon.[10]

References
  1. Brême 1996, p. 789; Bénézit 2006, p. 396.
  2. Wolf, John Baptist (1962). The Emergence of the Great Powers, 1685–1715. The Rise of Modern Europe. New York: Harper & Row. p. 254. OCLC 1148931150 – via the Internet Archive. Others, like Santerre, were obviously their way towards the forms that Watteau would develop for the eighteenth century.
  3. Myers 1969, p. 101.
  4. Hourticq, Louis [in French] (1939). Davidson, J. Leroy; Gerry, Philippa (eds.). The New Standard Encyclopedia of Art. New York: Garden City. p. 315. OCLC 1036767498 – via the Internet Archive.
  5. Constans 1979, p. 1659.
  6. Osborne 1970, p. 1039.
  7. Blunt 1973, p. 393.
  8. Milam, Jennifer (July 2014). "H-France Review Vol. 14 (July 2014), No. 120" (PDF).
  9. Barker, Emma (April 2013). "Fragonard and the Fantasy Figure: Painting the Imagination by Melissa Percival". French Studies: A Quarterly Review. 67 (2): 253. doi:10.1093/fs/knt012 – via Project MUSE.
  10. Viardot 1884, p. 303.
  11. Mérot 1995, p. 300; Lesné & Waro 2011, p. 34.
  12. Zolotov, Y. K. [in Russian] (1968). Французский портрет XVIII века (in Russian). Moscow: Iskusstvo. p. 17. OCLC 567935709, states Santerre's portraits to be somewhat close in style to Rigaud's.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  13. Brême 1996, p. 789, examplifies The Two Actresses and a portrait of Marie Adélaïde of Savoy as clearly influenced by François de Troy.
  14. Brookner 1972, p. 38, Mérot 1995, p. 301, pl. 341, and Brême 1996, p. 789, cite Santerre's copies after Girl at a Window, a painting by Rembrandt now in the Dulwich Gallery.
  15. Vlasov 1995–1997, vol. 3, p. 300, names Van Dyck as a major influence on Santerre as portraitist; Felici 2000, p. 913, cites a version of Portrait of a Sculptor in the National Gallery Prague as evoking Van Dyck's art.
  16. Leymarie, Jean (1961). The Spirit of the Letter in Painting. Translated from the French by James Emmons. Hallmark Cards. p. 62. OCLC 1036860507 – via the Internet Archive.
  17. Brême 1996, p. 789.
  18. Mérot 1995, p. 204.
  19. Gould, Cecil Hilton Monk (1981). Bernini in France: An Episode in Seventeenth-Century History. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. p. 137. ISBN 0-297-77944-3 – via the Internet Archive.
  20. Thuillier & Châtelet 1964, p. 139; Levey 1966, p. 35; Blunt 1973, p. 393; Brême 1996, p. 789; Bénézit 2006, pp. 396–397.
  21. Explication des ouvrages de peinture et dessins, sculpture, architecture et gravure des artistes vivans… (in French). Paris: Vinchon. 1836. p. 136 – via Gallica.
  22. Lesné & Waro 2011, pp. 113–114.
  23. Schönberger, Arno; Soehner, Halldor (1963). The Rococo Age: Art and Civilization of the 18th Century. Translated from the German by Daphne Woodward. New York: McGraw-Hill. p. 357, pl. 99 – via the Internet Archive.
  24. Wise, Susan; Warner, Malcolm (1996). French and British Paintings from 1600 to 1800 in the Art Institute of Chicago: a Catalogue of the Collection. Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, Princeton University Press. pp. 137–139. ISBN 0865591377 – via the Internet Archive.
  25. Kuznetsova, Irina; Sharnova, Elena (2001). Pushkin Museum, Moscow (ed.). Франция XVI — первой половины XIX века : собрание живописи (collection catalogue) (in Russian). Moscow: Krasnaya Ploschad'. pp. 230–231; cat. no. 205. ISBN 5-900743-57-8.
  26. Serebryannaya, N. K. (2018). Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg (ed.). Французская живопись XV-XVII веков (collection catalogue) (in Russian). Saint Petersburg: State Hermitage Publishers. pp. 417–418, cat. no. 241. ISBN 978-5-93572-811-3.

Bibliography
Primary sources
General studies
Additional studies
Reference works
  • Bénézit, Emmanuel (2006) [first published in French in 1911–1923]. Benezit Dictionary of Artists. Vol. 12. Paris: Gründ. pp. 396–397. ISBN 2-7000-3082-6 – via the Internet Archive.
  • Brême, Dominique (1996). "Santerre, Jean-Baptiste". In Turner, Jane (ed.). The Dictionary of Art. Vol. 27. New York: Grove's Dictionaries. p. 789. ISBN 1-884446-00-0. OCLC 1033667798 – via the Internet Archive.
  • Constans, Claire (1979). "Santerre (Jean-Baptiste)". In Laclotte, Michel (ed.). Petit Larousse de la Peinture. Vol. 2. Paris: Librairie Larousse. p. 1659. ISBN 2-03-020149-9.
  • Felici, Lucio, ed. (2000). Encyclopédie de l'art (in French). Paris: Le Livre de poche. p. 913. ISBN 2253053031. OCLC 1193410004 – via the Internet Archive.
  • Kepetzis, Ekaterini (2018). "Santerre, Jean-Baptiste". In Beyer, Andreas; Savoy, Bénédicte & Tegethoff, Wolf (eds.). Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon. Vol. 101. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. pp. 136–137. ISBN 978-3-11-023267-7.
  • Laclotte, Michel; Cuzin, Jean-Pierre, eds. (1999). Dictionnaire de la peinture (in French). Paris: Larousse. p. 913. ISBN 2-03-511441-1.
  • Maillard, Robert, ed. (1975). "Santerre, Jean-Baptiste". Dictionnaire universel de la peinture (in French). Vol. 6. Paris: Robert. p. 66. ISBN 2-850-36059-7.
  • Myers, Bernard S., ed. (1969). "Santerre, Jean-Baptiste". McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Art. Vol. 5. New York: McGraw-Hill. p. 101. OCLC 1150312272 – via the Internet Archive.
  • Osborne, Harold, ed. (1970). The Oxford Companion to Art (1989 reprint). Oxford: Clarendon Press. p. 1039. ISBN 0-19-866107-X. OCLC 1036799238 – via the Internet Archive.
  • Vlasov, V. G. [in Russian] (1995–1997). Стили в искусстве (in Russian). Vol. 3. Saint Petersburg: Kol'na. p. 300. ISBN 5-88737-010-6. OCLC 605179863.
  • Vollmer, Hans, ed. (1935). "Santerre, Jean-Baptiste". Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler (in German). Vol. 29. Leipzig: E. A. Seemann. pp. 429–430. OCLC 889110751.
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