Gabriel François Doyen : un peintre d'Histoire dans l'Europe des Lumières

A pioneering yet little-known figure in the movement to revitalise history painting in the second half of the 18th century, Gabriel François Doyen made a name for himself in Paris upon his return from the French Academy in Rome with La Mort de Virginie, exhibited at the 1759 Salon. Critics saw him as one of the great hopes for the revival of French painting, to the extent that, upon the death of his master Carle Vanloo, he was deemed worthy of completing the latter’s famous Cycle of Saint Gregory at the Church of Les Invalides. His fame reached its peak with Le Miracle des Ardents, painted for the Church of Saint-Roch in Paris, a masterpiece that influenced artists as far-reaching as Géricault.

During the Revolution, sidelined in favour of painters from David’s generation, he held important posts within the Commission for Monuments and worked to preserve France’s cultural heritage alongside his former pupil Alexandre Lenoir. In 1792, he chose to leave for Russia, where he taught at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in St Petersburg and painted large-scale decorative works for Empress Catherine II and later for her son Paul I.

In this volume, with a foreword by Alain Mérot, professor emeritus at Sorbonne University, previously unpublished sources and an updated catalogue enable readers to rediscover the tumultuous ambition of his work.