Jean Victor Bertin

Jean-Victor Bertin painted the idealised landscape of the French classical tradition: temples, villas and small figures from ancient history and myth set in calm, ordered countryside under clear southern light. Everything is composed rather than observed, with trees framing the view and a building or ruin placed exactly where the eye should rest.

Born in 1767, he became one of the leading neoclassical landscape painters of the Napoleonic years. He won a first class gold medal at the Salon in 1808, painted for the palaces of the Trianon and Fontainebleau, and was made a knight of the Légion d’honneur in 1822. He is also remembered as a teacher: Achille-Etna Michallon, Léon Cogniet and the young Camille Corot all studied with him. His work can be seen at the Louvre and Versailles. He died in Paris in 1842.

In An Italian Villa with Figures, notice how the tiny figures give scale to the architecture.