Jean pierre alaux biography of martin

French painter (1786–1864)

Not to be confused with Jean-Paul Alaux.

Jean Alaux, called "le Romain" ("the Roman"), (1786 – 2 March 1864) was a French historypainter and Director of the French Academy in Rome from 1846 to 1852.^[1]

Biography

Alaux was born in Bordeaux, the son of a painter and the second of four brothers who all became painters.

He received his first lessons in art from his father, but went on to a formal training with Pierre Lacour and later with Pierre-Narcisse Guérin.^[2] In 1807 he was admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

From 1808 he entered works for the Prix de Rome, but his energies were diverted when his elder brother, Jean-Francois Alaux (1783–1858), asked him to help with a large "neorama" (a type of Panorama) he was working on. Alaux eventually won the major Prix de Rome in 1815 with a work entitled Briseis weeping over the body of Patroclus, a scene inspired by the Iliad of Homer.^[3&