René Théodore Berthon

The Capture of Malta in 1530 by Philippe Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, Grand Master of the Order of Knights Hospitaller, now at the Palace of Versailles.

René Théodore Berthon (1776–1859) was a French painter of religious and historical subjects, and of portraits.

Life

Berthon was born at Tours in 1776, and studied under David. He painted scriptural and historical subjects, and a large number of portraits, which, although of no great merit, gained him a certain reputation in the days of the first empire and the restoration. Among his portraits are those of Napoleon I when First Consul, Pauline Bonaparte, Mile. Duchesnois, and Lady Morgan. Several of his historical pictures are at Versailles. He died in Paris in 1859.^[1]

His daughter, Sidonie Berthon, a miniature painter, was a pupil of her father and of Mme de Mirbel. She was born in Paris in 1817, and died in 1871.^[1]

Lady Morgan, portrait, now at the National Gallery of Ireland.

His son, René Théodore Berthon, was a portrait artist who emigrated to England and then to Canada.

References

Sources

This article incorporates text from the article "BERTHON, René Théodore" in Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers by Michael Bryan, edited by Robert Edmund Graves and Sir Walter Armstrong, an 1886–1889 publication now in the public domain.

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