Jean-Pierre-Louis-Laurent Houël (28 June 1735 – 14 November 1813)Conisbee 1996. was a French painter, engraver and draftsman. During his long life, Houël witnessed the reign of

Louis XV Louis XV (15 February 1710 – 10 May 1774), known as Louis the Beloved (french: le Bien-Aimé), 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 ...

, the

French Revolution The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in coup of 18 Brumaire, November 1799. Many of its ...

, and the period of Napoleon's First Empire.

Biography

He was born at Rouen into a family of prosperous artisans, who sent him to the city's drawing academy when he was fifteen. Here he was exposed to the art of early Dutch and Flemish painters, which was to have a defining impact on his chosen specialty of landscape painting. In 1758 Houël published a book of landscape

engraving Engraving is the practice of incising a design onto a hard, usually flat surface by cutting grooves into it with a burin. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an in ...

s, and in 1768 he painted six views of the

Duc de Choiseul {{Unreferenced, date=April 2019 Choiseul is an illustrious noble family from Champagne, France, descendants of the comtes of Langres. The family's head was Renaud III de Choiseul, comte de Langres and sire de Choiseul, who in 1182 married Alix ...

's country estate, the

Château de Chanteloup The Château de Chanteloup was an imposing 18th-century French château with elaborate gardens, compared by some contemporaries to Versailles. It was located in the Loire Valley on the south bank of the river Loire, downstream from the town of Amb ...

. The following year his influential patrons secured a place for him at the

French Academy in Rome The French Academy in Rome (french: Académie de France à Rome) is an Academy located in the Villa Medici, within the Villa Borghese, on the Pincio (Pincian Hill) in Rome, Italy. History The Academy was founded at the Palazzo Capranica in ...

. Here, captivated with Italian customs, landscapes, and ancient sites, he traveled throughout southern

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

, making

gouache Gouache (; ), body color, or opaque watercolor is a water-medium paint consisting of natural pigment, water, a binding agent (usually gum arabic or dextrin), and sometimes additional inert material. Gouache is designed to be opaque. Gouache ...

drawings, which he presented at the Paris Salons of the early 1770s, exhibits that drew the attention of a wide public. He spent the years 1776 to 1779 traveling in

Sicily (man) it, Siciliana (woman) , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = Ethnicity , demographics1_footnotes = , demographi ...

Lipari Lipari (; scn, Lìpari) is the largest of the Aeolian Islands in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the northern coast of Sicily, southern Italy; it is also the name of the island's main town and ''comune'', which is administratively part of the Metropo ...

, and

Malta Malta ( , , ), officially the Republic of Malta ( mt, Repubblika ta' Malta ), is an island country in the Mediterranean Sea. It consists of an archipelago, between Italy and Libya, and is often considered a part of Southern Europe. It lies ...

, after which, based on his journey, he published a series of four volumes of lavishly illustrated

travel books The genre of travel literature encompasses outdoor literature, guide books, nature writing, and travel memoirs. One early travel memoirist in Western literature was Pausanias, a Greek geographer of the 2nd century CE. In the early modern ...

(1782–1787). Houël's main intention was to illustrate local topography, but his delicate applications of

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 ...

also magnificently captured the effects of light and atmosphere. To help finance these projects, he sold his preliminary drawings in Paris in 1780.

Louis XVI Louis XVI (''Louis-Auguste''; ; 23 August 175421 January 1793) was the last King of France before the fall of the monarchy during the French Revolution. He was referred to as ''Citizen Louis Capet'' during the four months just before he was ...

purchased 46, and Catherine II of Russia, more than 500, of which 260 are preserved at the

Hermitage Museum The State Hermitage Museum ( rus, Государственный Эрмитаж, r=Gosudarstvennyj Ermitaž, p=ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)ɨj ɪrmʲɪˈtaʂ, links=no) is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is the largest ...

in St. Petersburg. In his later years, Houël published two illustrated treatises on elephants. Drawings of other animals suggest he was preparing to publish further zoological works; however, his death at the age of seventy-eight cut short his plans. image:Prise de la Bastille.jpg, ''Prise de la Bastille'' (1789) File:Houel- Vue du château de Chanteloup prise de la cascade – Musée des Beaux Arts, Tours.jpg, View of the

from the south

Notes

Bibliography

* Conisbee, Philip (1996). "Hoüel, Jean-Pierre-Louis-Laurent", vol. 14, p. 799, in ''

The Dictionary of Art ''Grove Art Online'' is the online edition of ''The Dictionary of Art'', often referred to as the ''Grove Dictionary of Art'', and part of Oxford Art Online, an internet gateway to online art reference publications of Oxford University Press, ...

'', edited by Jane Turner, reprinted with minor corrections in 1998. New York: Grove. . Also a
Oxford Art Online
(subscription required). {{DEFAULTSORT:Houel, Jean-Pierre-Louis-Laurent 1735 births 1813 deaths Artists from Rouen 18th-century French painters French male painters 19th-century French painters French draughtsmen 19th-century French male artists 18th-century French male artists