Paul Delaroche Prints

About Paul Delaroche

Hippolyte-Paul Delaroche was born in Paris in 1797 into a family of art dealers and trained with Gros. He found a middle way between the classicism of Ingres and the colour of Delacroix, choosing episodes from English and French history, the princes in the Tower, Cromwell at the coffin of Charles I, Lady Jane Grey at the block, and painting them with a stage manager's eye for the moment before disaster. The Execution of Lady Jane Grey was the sensation of the 1834 Salon. He married Vernet's daughter, ran the most crowded studio in Paris, where Gérôme, Couture and Millet all studied, and spent six years on the Hémicycle, the great mural of seventy-five artists at the École des Beaux-Arts. His Bonaparte Crossing the Alps of 1848 was a deliberate answer to David's. He died in Paris in 1856.