Contributor VIAF URI: 220277427
Artist of print: S.2.01 Le printems ou la voliere, S.2.02 L’eté, S.2.03 L’automne, S.2.04 L’hyver, S.2.05 Le pot au lait, S.2.06 Le racomodement, S.2.07 Le clavecin, S.2.08 Le souper, S.2.09 Le prêtre d’esculape, S.2.10 L’enlévement, S.2.11 La statue de l’amitie, S.2.12 Le bal, S.2.13 Le loup garou, S.2.14 L’heureux mariage, S.2.15 L’amour frére quêteur, S.2.16 L’ombre d’Hylas, S.2.17 Le premier soupir de l’amour, S.2.18 Le juge intégre, S.2.19 La rupture, S.2.20 La promenade du matin, S.2.21 Les derniers regrets d’un amant, S.2.22 Le concert, S.2.23 Le tombeau, S.2.24 Conseils aux femmes, S.2.25 Regrets de David sur la mort de Betsabée,
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Biography:
Joseph-Barthélémy Le Bouteux was born in Lille in on 6 May 1742, the son of painter and member of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, Pierre-Michel Le Bouteux (1683-1750). Little is known of his early life, but by 1764 he was studying at the Académie Royale in Paris, winning a medal for his achievements. From the following year until 1769 he was training in the workshop of painter, printmaker, and designer Noël Hallé (1711-81).
There was every indication that Le Bouteux would achieve great success as an artist. By 1768 he was named adjunct professor at the École royale gratuite de dessin de Bachelier, but his greatest achievement came a year later when he won the Prix de Rome, the very highest award offered by the Académie Royale. Le Bouteux’s biographer, Sophie Raux-Carpentier, has argued that the painting that won him the prize, Achille, après avoir traîné le cadaver d’Hector, le depose au pied du lit où repose le corps mort de Patrocle [Achilles, after having dragged Hector’s corpse, places it at the foot of the bed where the dead body of Patroclus rests], was likely the first large canvas that he completed. Very much in the taste of academic history painting of the 1760s, recalling salon hits such as Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s Coresus sacrificing himself to save Callirhoe (1765), it remains the only testament to Le Bouteux’s command of history painting.
It would be two years before Le Bouteux claimed his prize, leaving Paris in 1771 for Rome where he would remain at the Académie de France until October 1775 when he left Rome to return to Paris. After that date he appears to have disappeared without a trace. Aside from the 26 prints that he designed for the second volume of Jean-Benjamin de Laborde’s Choix de Chansons mise en musique… (the sketches for which he made in Rome, and are preserved in the Chantilly volumes), there is very little remaining of his oeuvre that can be confidently attributed to him, save a small number of sketches of landscapes, gardens and monuments taken during his sojourn in Italy.
Only the frontispiece designed by Le Bouteux for the second volume of Choix de Chansons is dated to 1774, the remaining illustrations bear only his name as designer: Le Bouteux inv. The etching of plates after his designs was shared almost equally between François-Denis Née (1732-1817) and Louis Joseph Masquelier I (1741-1811) who shared a studio on rue des Francs-Bourgeois in Paris. Both Née and Masquelier were students of Jacques-Phillipe Le Bas (1707-83) as Moreau le Jeune had been, attesting to the close artistic network of printmakers involved in Laborde’s project.
Bibliography
Sophie Raux, “Joseph-Barthélémy Le Bouteux : contribution à l’étude de l’oeuvre dessiné”, Rencontres de l’École du Louvre : Dessins Français aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles no. 2, 415-30.
Sophie Raux-Carpentier, Pierre-Michel Le Bouteux, un académicien méconnu à Lille au XVIIIe siècle,” in Jean-Pierre Lethuillier (ed), La Peintre en Province : de la fin du moyen age au début de XXe siècle (Rennes : Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2002), 113-125).
Roles (Getty AAT Term): artists (visual artists)
Roles Getty AAT URI: 300025103
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