Francois Marius Granet Biography | Oil Painting Reproductions

As a boy Francois Marius Granet had a strong desire for art, this drove his parents to put him, after some preparatory art education from a passing Italian artist, in a free school of art directed by Jean-Antoine Constantin, a landscape painter of some fame. In 1793, Granet followed the Republican militia volunteers of his hometown to the siege of Toulon, where he got work as a decorator in the arms stockpile.

While a young man in Aix, he made the acquaintance of the young Comte de Forbin, and upon his invitation, Granet, in the year 1797, went to Paris. De Forbin was one of the pupils of Jacques-Louis David, and he was able to get Granet into the same studio.

In 1802, he left Paris for Rome, where he remained until 1819, he was able to get a room in the convent of Capuchins which was an ex-prison cell and had been used for the manufacture of money during the Revolution, but now was inhabited only by artists. It is here, in the changing lights and shadows of the hallways and rooms of the convent, that Francois Marius Granet found the inspiration for that one painting to which with varying success, he dedicated his career. When he returned to Paris, carrying with him along with various other works, he brought one of fourteen repetitions of his celebrated Le Choeur de la Chapelle des Capucins a Rome, painted in 1811.

In 1819, Louis Philippe decorated François Marius Granet and named him Chevalier de l'Ordre St Michel, and Conservateur des Tableaux de Versailles. He became a member of the Institute in 1830; but despite these honors, and the ties which bound him to Comte de Forbin, now director of the Louvre, Granet constantly kept returning to Rome.

Art Movement: Neoclassicism.
Artists Influencing Francois Marius Granet: Jean-Antoine Constantin, Jacques-Louis David, Simon Denis.
He Traveled To Italy.
Artist's Biography compiled by Albert L. Mansour at The World's Artist, with text adapted from Wikipedia.