Jacques-Antoine-Marie Lemoine, also Lemoyne (17 July 1751 – 7 February 1824), was a French artist, known primarily for

portraiture A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expressions are predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person. For this r ...

. Lemoine was born in

Rouen Rouen (, ; or ) is a city on the River Seine in northern France. It is the prefecture of the Regions of France, region of Normandy (administrative region), Normandy and the Departments of France, department of Seine-Maritime. Formerly one of ...

. He declined to follow his father's precedent in becoming a

notary A notary is a person authorised to perform acts in legal affairs, in particular witnessing signatures on documents. The form that the notarial profession takes varies with local legal systems. A notary, while a legal professional, is disti ...

, and instead began study at the École des Beaux-Arts in Rouen. Having moved to Paris by 1772, he studied under Jean-Jacques Lagrenée (1737–1821) and Maurice-Quentin de la Tour (1704–1788). He was attracted to Parisian theater and music, and early in his career often portrayed actors, singers, and musicians, using

pastels A pastel () is an art medium in a variety of forms including a stick, a square a pebble or a pan of color; though other forms are possible; they consist of powdered pigment and a binder. The pigments used in pastels are similar to those use ...

and

chalk Chalk is a soft, white, porous, sedimentary carbonate rock. It is a form of limestone composed of the mineral calcite and originally formed deep under the sea by the compression of microscopic plankton that had settled to the sea floor. Chalk ...

. He also worked in

oil An oil is any nonpolar chemical substance that is composed primarily of hydrocarbons and is hydrophobic (does not mix with water) & lipophilic (mixes with other oils). Oils are usually flammable and surface active. Most oils are unsaturated ...

watercolor Watercolor (American English) or watercolour (British English; see spelling differences), also ''aquarelle'' (; from Italian diminutive of Latin ''aqua'' "water"), is a painting method”Watercolor may be as old as art itself, going back to t ...

, and

porcelain Porcelain () is a ceramic material made by heating substances, generally including materials such as kaolinite, in a kiln to temperatures between . The strength and translucence of porcelain, relative to other types of pottery, arises mainl ...

. In the late 1770s or early 1780s, he may have sketched for

fashion plate A fashion plate is an illustration (a plate) demonstrating the highlights of fashionable styles of clothing. Traditionally they are rendered through etching, line engraving, or lithograph and then colored by hand. To quote historian James Laver ...

s. In 1783, Lemoine married the artist Agathe-Françoise Bonvallet. He began his work as a

miniaturist A portrait miniature is a miniature portrait painting, usually executed in gouache, watercolor, or enamel. Portrait miniatures developed out of the techniques of the miniatures in illuminated manuscripts, and were popular among 16th-century eli ...

in the mid-1780s. His early miniatures are influenced by the "free and painterly technique" of Pierre-Adolphe Hall. In 1785, he painted Louise Benoît Zamor, the

page Page most commonly refers to: * Page (paper), one side of a leaf of paper, as in a book Page, PAGE, pages, or paging may also refer to: Roles * Page (assistance occupation), a professional occupation * Page (servant), traditionally a young m ...

Madame du Barry Jeanne Bécu, Comtesse du Barry (19 August 1743 – 8 December 1793) was the last ''maîtresse-en-titre'' of King Louis XV of France. She was executed, by guillotine, during the French Revolution due to accounts of treason—particularly being ...

and later

revolutionary A revolutionary is a person who either participates in, or advocates a revolution. The term ''revolutionary'' can also be used as an adjective, to refer to something that has a major, sudden impact on society or on some aspect of human endeavor. ...

. The portrait is one piece of evidence for Zamor's African origin. Lemoine invented a perspective

easel An easel is an upright support used for displaying and/or fixing something resting upon it, at an angle of about 20° to the vertical. In particular, easels are traditionally used by painters to support a painting while they work on it, normally ...

for use in landscape painting, and another device to help create likenesses in portraiture. He also collected texts on

geometry Geometry (; ) is, with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. It is concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is c ...

and perspective in relation to

design A design is a plan or specification for the construction of an object or system or for the implementation of an activity or process or the result of that plan or specification in the form of a prototype, product, or process. The verb ''to design'' ...

and painting. Lemoine's wife died in 1794, and he returned to Rouen, where he was appointed professor of drawing at the École de Marine in 1799. After 1798, he produced few works, but kept a

pied-à-terre A ''pied-à-terre'' (, plural: ''pieds-à-terre''; French for "foot on the ground") is a small living unit, e.g., apartment or condominium, often located in a large city and not used as an individual's primary residence. The term implies use of ...

in Paris and continued to exhibit at the Salons through 1817. He died at his home in Paris, and bequeathed his manuscript collection to the state.

Germaine Greer Germaine Greer (; born 29 January 1939) is an Australian writer and public intellectual, regarded as one of the major voices of the radical feminist movement in the latter half of the 20th century. Specializing in English and women's literatu ...

points out that because

Marie-Victoire Lemoine Marie-Victoire Lemoine (; 1754 – 2 December 1820) was a French classicist painter. Life Born in Paris, Marie-Victoire Lemoine was the eldest daughter of four sisters to Charles Lemoine and Marie-Anne Rousselle. Her sisters, Marie-Denise Ville ...

sometimes signed her works "Lemoine," the works of the two artists may sometimes be misattributed.

, ''The Obstacle Race: The Fortunes of Women Painters and Their Work'' (St. Martin's Press, 2001, originally published 1979), p. 27
online.
/ref>

References

Unless otherwise noted, information from Marjorie E. Wieseman, ''Perfect Likeness: European and American Portrait Miniatures from the Cincinnati Art Museum'' (Yale University Press, 2006), p. 22
online.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lemoine, Jacques-Antoine-Marie 18th-century French painters French male painters 19th-century French painters Artists from Rouen 1751 births 1824 deaths 19th-century French male artists 18th-century French male artists

Further reading

References