Léon-Maxime Faivre
1908
265cm × 367cm
oil on canvas
Versailles, Versailles Palace
© Faivre Léon-Maxime / RMN / Gérard Blot

Léon-Maxime Faivre
Little is known about Léon-Maxime Faivre. He was born in Paris in 1856 and studied under Jean-Léon Gérôme, one of the most influential figures of Academic Art during the Second Empire. Academic Art was derided by some as "Fireman Art" due to the unfortunate similarities between the headgear shown in the paintings and that worn by French firemen at the time.

Léon-Maxime Faivre joined the Société des Artistes Français in 1886 and regularly exhibited his works at the annual art exhibitions, known as Salons. Death of Princess de Lamballe featured at the Salon des Artistes Français in 1908. The painting depicts a scene from the French Revolution, the 1792 September massacres, which marked the start of the extermination of the nobility and ushered in the Reign of Terror. A study for the painting has also been preserved—though slightly different from the finished work (featuring one more boy than the painting), a little more animated and less rigid—and is on display at the Musée de Vernon.

Léon-Maxime lived a long, happy and fulfilled life until his death in Paris in 1941.

Hippolyte Lecomte
1831
43cm × 60cm
oil on canvas
Paris, Musée Carnavalet
© RMN / Agence Bulloz

Hippolyte Lecomte
Not much can be said about Hippolyte Lecomte (1781-1857). He was a respectable painter of historical scenes, particularly those from the First Empire and the Napoleonic Wars. He married Camille Vernet, the sister of the painter Horace Vernet, with whom he had a son, Charles Emile Lecomte-Vernet, who also became a painter (Orientalist). Along with Auguste Garneray, he designed costumes for the Opera ballets.

Battle in Rue de Rohan shows a scene from 1830, on the final day of the July Revolution, which saw the monarchy overthrown. The painting is not, however, Lecomte's most outstanding work, with its somewhat static crowd scene and horizontal composition. Eugène Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People is a more impressive piece on the same theme.

Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier
19^th century
29cm × 22cm
oil on canvas
Paris, Musée du Louvre
© RMN / All rights reserved

Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier
Jean-Louis-Etienne Meissonier was born in Lyons in 1815. He was a painter who occasionally lapsed into "Fireman Art" due to the "official" academic nature of certain works, but who was better than his poor reputation might imply. The acclaimed artist—multiple Salon award-winner, member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1861, chairman of the Institut de France from 1876 until his death in 1891 and Grand Croix de la Légion d'Honneur in 1889—had the unfortunate idea of excluding Gustave Courbet from the 1872 Salon, because of the latter's alleged involvement alongside the Communards in toppling the Vendôme column. It has since been proven that Courbet was not involved. Moreoever, he is also widely regarded as a much better painter than his persecutor, as shown by this monochrome-yet-highly-illustrative scene from the 1848 Revolution.

André Victor Edouard Devambez
late 19^th century
140cm × 107cm
oil on canvas
© ADAGP / RMN / Gérard Blot

André Victor Edouard Devambez
André Devambez (1867-1944) is an intriguing artist: a loner who shunned all those movements, schools and vanguards that lit up the early 20^th century. He was fond of painting small- and medium-sized pictures filled with teeming crowd scenes (though he did produce a huge 6m x 3.5m canvas hung on the walls of the Sorbonne in Paris). Devambez drew inspiration from children's tales and sometimes allowed a hint of irony to creep into his genre works. His independent stance did not, however, deprive him of accolades: he was professor of fine arts and member of the Institut de France from 1930 onwards.

His most well-known work is still The Charge (1902-1903), which hangs in the Musée d'Orsay and shows the police rushing demonstrators on Boulevard Montmartre. The painting portrays a night scene offering a high-angle viewpoint reminiscent of Monet's Rue Montorgueil.

The Barricade, painted in 1911 and kept in the Versailles Palace, is a sort of genre painting reflecting the Paris Commune (with the Communards waiting at the foot of the barricade built out of street paving); the left-hand side of the picture again demonstrates the artist's penchant for crowd scenes.

anonymous
1936
black & white photograph
© Roger-Viollet

anonymous
1968
black & white photograph
© Roger-Viollet