PIERRE - NOLASQUE BERGERET
Bordeaux 1782 - Paris 1863
Bergeret was a member of the generation of David students who initiated the troubadour style of historic genre painting. He was from a family of Bordeaux printers and publishers and received his first artistic training there under Pierre Lacour the Elder. In the late 1790’s he went to Paris and entered first the studio of François-André Vincent and then of Jacques-Louis David where he worked alongside François Marius Granet and J.-A.-D. Ingres, with whom he became good friends.
At the same time as he was designing decorations for Napoleonic monuments in a neoclassical idiom Bergeret pursued his interest in post-classical history. Various activities gave him the necessary background for depicting scenes from modern history, including visiting the Musée des Monuments Français, making prints in the style of the old masters, and designing costumes for historical plays produced by the Opéra Comique in Paris.
From Bergeret’s earliest Salon exhibit of 1806, Homage Offered to Raphael After His Death which was acquired by Napoleon for Josephine’s painting gallery at Malmaison, he specialized in the popular historical genre of lives of the artists. Just as the Bourbons and their sympathizers appreciated historical genre paintings of their illustrious ancestors, artists of the time sought to identify with historical precdents. Anecdotes from the Renaissance, when artists enjoyed social prominence and a supportive system of patronage, were particularly popular. Among his many pictures devoted to this subject matter were Francis I in Titian’s Studio, 1807 (le Puy-en-Velay, Musée Crozatier), and Charles V in Titian’s Studio, 1808 (Bordeaux, Musée des Beaux-Arts). Bergeret clearly researched the historical details of these works, including the artworks and furnishings, the costume, and physiognomies.
