
Alexandre-François Desportes (24 February 1661 — 20 April 1743) was a French painter and decorative designer who specialised in animals.
Desportes was born in
Champigneulle,
Ardennes. He studied in Paris, in the studio of the Flemish painter
Nicasius Bernaerts, a pupil of
Frans Snyders. During a brief sojourn in
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...
, 1695–96, he painted portraits of
John III Sobieski
John III Sobieski ( (); (); () 17 August 1629 – 17 June 1696) was King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1674 until his death in 1696.
Born into Polish nobility, Sobieski was educated at the Jagiellonian University and toured Eur ...
and Polish aristocrats; after the king's death Desportes returned to Paris, convinced that he should specialise in animals and flowers. He was received by the
Académie de peinture et de sculpture in 1699, with the ''Self-Portrait in Hunting Dress'' now in the
Musée du Louvre
The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is a national art museum in Paris, France, and one of the most famous museums in the world. It is located on the Rive Droite, Right Bank of the Seine in the city's 1st arrondissement of Paris, 1st arron ...
. In 1712–13 he spent six months in England. He received many commissions for decorative panels for the royal
château
A château (, ; plural: châteaux) is a manor house, or palace, or residence of the lord of the manor, or a fine country house of nobility or gentry, with or without fortifications, originally, and still most frequently, in French-speaking re ...
x:
Versailles
The Palace of Versailles ( ; ) is a former royal residence commissioned by King Louis XIV located in Versailles, Yvelines, Versailles, about west of Paris, in the Yvelines, Yvelines Department of Île-de-France, Île-de-France region in Franc ...
,
Marly,
Meudon,
Compiègne
Compiègne (; ) is a Communes of France, commune in the Oise Departments of France, department of northern France. It is located on the river Oise (river), Oise, and its inhabitants are called ''Compiégnois'' ().
Administration
Compiègne is t ...
and, his last royal commission, for Louis XV at
Choisy, 1742. He also did decorative paintings for the duc de Bourbon at
Chantilly. Both
Louis XIV
LouisXIV (Louis-Dieudonné; 5 September 16381 September 1715), also known as Louis the Great () or the Sun King (), was King of France from 1643 until his death in 1715. His verified reign of 72 years and 110 days is the List of longest-reign ...
and
Louis XV
Louis XV (15 February 1710 – 10 May 1774), known as Louis the Beloved (), was King of France from 1 September 1715 until his death in 1774. He succeeded his great-grandfather Louis XIV at the age of five. Until he reached maturity (then defi ...
commissioned portraits of their favorite hunting dogs.
Desportes would follow the royal hunt
[ Saint-Simon recorded ""] with a small notebook he carried to make on-site sketches for still lives of the game that resulted from the day's hunt, for the king to make a choice of which were to be worked up into finished paintings. In several paintings he combined game with a ''buffet'' of spectacular pieces of silver as they might be displayed in a dining room; these are precious documents of the lost silver of the reign of Louis XIV.
His details of trophies of game or animals were used in cartoons for
tapestry in which work of several painters was combined, woven at the
Savonnerie and at the
Gobelins (''Portière de Diane'', Louvre). For the Gobelins he designed the series of tapestries called ''Les Nouvelles Indes'' (8 of them, woven in the Manufacture Les Gobelins in Paris, have been saved in Archbishop's palace in
Prague
Prague ( ; ) is the capital and List of cities and towns in the Czech Republic, largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its P ...
).
At his death, in
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
, he left a considerable amount of work in his studio (where his nephew
Nicolas had trained), which included studies of animals and plants as well as some fox-hunting sketches by
Jan Fyt. In 1784, the
comte d'Angiviller, general director of the
Bâtiments du Roi The Bâtiments du Roi (, 'King's Buildings') was a division of the Maison du Roi ('King's Household') in France under the Ancien Régime. It was responsible for building works at the King's residences in and around Paris.
History
The Bâtiments ...
acquired these resources for painter's models at the manufactory of
Sèvres porcelain, so that Desportes' influence in the iconography of French arts extended almost throughout the century.
See also
*
Animalier
*
Still Life with a Peacock
Notes
References
Alexandre-François Desportes on-lineGetty Museum: Tapestry screens after cartoons by Desportes''Still Life with Silver'' Metropolitan Museum
{{DEFAULTSORT:Desportes, Alexandre-Francois
17th-century French painters
French male painters
18th-century French painters
1661 births
1743 deaths
People from Ardennes (department)
French tapestry artists
18th-century French male artists