Nicolas Benjamin Delapierre

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Nicolas Benjamin Delapierre (1739-circa 1800) was a well-known and highly regarded French artist in the second half of the 18th century.

1 Career
2 Mystery
3 Selected Paintings
4 References
5 External Links

[edit] Career

Although he began and ended his painting career in France—-he was a student of Carle van Loo and of Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin—-for many intervening years Delapierre painted in Russia. He was active in Moscow (1767), and later in St. Petersburg (1768-?), where he taught at the Imperial Academy of Arts. In 1770 he became the “title agree” at the Academy for a portrait of Catherine II, and also became “royal painter”—-executing portraits of the principal members of the imperial family.

By 1786 Delapierre had returned to France and was well-established in Lyon, where he exhibited four of his portraits at the “Salon des Arts” of Lyon (25 August 1786 – 11 September 1786). Earlier, he might have attended the month-long “Salon de 1785” biennial art exposition in Paris that began on 25 August 1785, because this event was enormously popular among artists and art enthusiasts and attracted people from all over Europe.

[edit] Mystery

One of his paintings, Portrait of a Seated Gentleman, is the subject of some mystery. The well-executed portrait, dated 1785, shows an 18th-century gentleman sitting at a desk and beginning to write on a single sheet of paper. On the desk in the foreground is a copy of “De la Caisse d’Escompte,” a financial pamphlet published on 17 May 1785 by the famous French orator and statesman Mirabeau (Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau).

This portrait is particularly intriguing because it was painted several years before Mirabeau achieved prominence, and because the conspicuous financial pamphlet ultimately had important repercussions leading up to the French Revolution.

The ownership of the portrait prior to 1928 is unknown, as is the identity of the sitter.