Paul Delaroche

Paul Delaroche painted history as human drama. He chose tense, private moments, often from English and French history, and painted them with smooth finish, careful detail and quiet, theatrical lighting, so that the viewer feels like a witness to the scene.

He was born in Paris in 1797 and became one of the most popular painters in France in the 1830s. His Execution of Lady Jane Grey, in the National Gallery in London, and The Princes in the Tower, in the Louvre, are his best known works. He painted the vast Hémicycle at the École des Beaux-Arts, a gathering of great artists of the past, and taught many pupils, including Jean-Léon Gérôme and Jean-François Millet.

His Bonaparte Crossing the Alps shows Napoleon on a mule, cold and tired, a deliberate contrast to David’s rearing horse. It hangs in the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. He died in Paris in 1856.