Jean-Baptiste Bertrand
1823–1887 · French painter and lithographer of the nineteenth century
Jean-Baptiste Bertrand, also known as James Bertrand (Lyon, 1823 – Orsay, 1887), was a nineteenth-century French painter and lithographer, best known for his heroic and literary scenes.
He trained in Lyon under Étienne Rey and Jean-Claude Bonnefond before, on the advice of Alphonse Périn, moving to Paris, where he entered the École des Beaux-Arts in 1844 and first exhibited at the Salon in 1857. For eleven years he worked with Périn and his teacher Victor Orsel on decorating the Chapel of the Eucharist at Notre-Dame de Lorette. He travelled in Italy between 1857 and 1862.
Back in Paris he befriended sculptors such as Carpeaux, Falguière and Clésinger. From 1866, influenced by them, he largely moved away from his early Nazarene style toward allegories and genre scenes. Works such as The Death of Sappho (1867), The Death of Virginie (1869), The Death of Manon Lescaut (1870) and The Death of Ophelia (1872) became widely known through engravings. He taught Hortense Richard.
Teachers and pupils
Pupils
- Hortense Richard 1858–1940