Alexandre Debelle

Alexandre Debelle (Voreppe, 1805 – Grenoble, 1897) was a French painter, designer and lithographer. Born into a noble family of military men, he first studied law at the University of Grenoble, but around 1830 decided to become an artist under Benjamin Rolland, curator of art at the Museum of Grenoble. He began as a landscape painter, depicting natural scenes from throughout the Dauphiné, and later published a four-volume album of lithographs that served as a tourist guide to the region.

After failing to gain admission to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1832, he exhibited at the Louvre in 1837 and settled in Paris, where he kept exhibiting until 1848. From 1839 he turned mainly to history painting, with scenes from the Revolutionary period, which became his best-known works. After Rolland's retirement he was appointed curator of the Museum of Grenoble in 1853, a post he held until 1887. There he promoted local artists such as Jacques Gay, Jean Achard, Henri Blanc-Fontaine, Diodore Rahoult and Théodore Ravanat.

In the 1860s he travelled widely through the Mediterranean region and produced several paintings of North Africa. From 1870 to 1872, together with the librarian Hyacinthe Gariel, he organised the museum's move to a new building designed by Charles-Auguste Questel, now known as the Musée-bibliothèque de Grenoble. His legacy rests mainly on his Revolutionary history paintings and his institutional work at his home city's museum.