Henri-Paul Motte

Cardinal Richelieu at the Siege of La Rochelle

Battle of Zama, 1890

Henri-Paul Motte (13 December 1846 – 1 April 1922) was a 19th-century French painter from Paris, who specialised in history painting and historic genre.

Motte was a pupil of Jean-Léon Gérôme and began to exhibit at the Paris Salon from 1874 onwards. The painting Le cheval de Troie (The Trojan horse) was the artist's début at the Salon, and was acquired by the Wadsworth Atheneum in 2011. In 1892 he was made a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur. He won a bronze medal at the Exposition Universelle (1900). He is best known for his work of the Siege of La Rochelle, a depiction of Cardinal Richelieu in battle in the 17th century, completed in 1881.

Works

• Le cheval de Troie (The Trojan horse) (1874; Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut)
• Baal Moloch dévorant les prisonniers de guerre à Babylone (Baal Moloch devouring the prisoners of war in Babylon) (1876; Musée national des beaux-arts d'Alger)
• Passage du Rhône par l'armée d'Annibal (Hannibal's army crossing the Rhône) (1878)
• Circé et les compagnons d'Ulysse (Circe and the companions of Ulysses) (1879)
• César s'ennuie (1880)
• Le Cardinal de Richelieu au siège de La Rochelle (Cardinal Richelieu at the siege of La Rochelle) (1881; musée d'Orbigny Bernon, La Rochelle)
• Les oies du Capitole (The geese of the Capitol) (1881; Untraced)

• Vercingétorix se rend à César (Vercingetorix surrenders to Caesar) (1886)