LÉPICIÉ, Nicolas-Bernard

Painter, part of a French family of artists. François-Bernard Lépicié was an engraver who became secretary and historiographer of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, in which capacity he compiled a catalogue of the paintings in the French royal collection and an important set of lives of the Premiers Peintres du Roi. His wife, Renée-Elisabeth Lépicié (née Marlie; 1714-73), was also an engraver, signing a number of plates after François Boucher, Jean-Siméon Chardin, Noël Hallé and other artists. Their son Nicolas-Bernard Lépicié (1735-1784) was a painter specializing in large historical and religious canvases, although he is perhaps best known for his charming small-scale genreGLOSSARYIn a broad sense, the term is used to mean a particular branch or category of art; landscape and portraiture, for example, are genres of painting, and the essay and the short story are genres of literature. scenes.

Nicolas-Bernard Lépicié was taught engravingGLOSSARYA print made from a metal plate that has had a design cut into it with a sharp point. Ink is smeared over the plate and then wiped off, the ink remaining in the etched lines being transferred when the plate is pressed very firmly onto a sheet of paper. by his father before entering the studio of the painter Carle Van Loo. In 1759 he won second prize in the Prix de RomeGLOSSARYA scholarship, founded concurrently with the French Academy in Rome (1666), that enabled prize-winning students at the Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris to spend a period (usually 4 years) in Rome at the state's expense. Prizes for architecture began to be awarded regularly in 1723, and prizes for engravers and musicians were added in the 19th century. The prizes were meant to perpetuate the academic tradition and during the 18th and 19th centuries winning the award was the traditional stepping stone to the highest honours for painters and sculptors. Many distinguished artists (as well as many nonentities) were Prix de Rome winners, notably David, Fragonard, and Ingres among painters and Clodion, Girardon, and Houdon among sculptors. The prizes are still awarded and the system has been adopted by other countries. competition at the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, but he never went to Rome. He was approved (agréé) by the Académie Royale in 1764 on presentation of a vast painting of the Landing of William the Conqueror on the English Coast, which is now in the Abbaye aux Hommes in Caen. He subsequently painted a series of pictures for the above foundation, including the Baptism of Christ (1765) and Christ and the Little Children (1767; both in situ), as well as a Conversion of Saul (1767; untraced).

In 1769 he was received (reçu) as a full member by the Académie Royale on presentation of Achilles and the Centaur Chiron (Troyes, Musée des Beaux-Arts et d'Archéologie ); he became an assistant professor in 1770 and a professor in 1777. His studio had a fine reputation, and several painters prominent in the Neo-classicalGLOSSARYRelating to the culture of ancient Greece and Rome (classical Antiquity). The classical world played a profoundly important role in the Renaissance, with Italian scholars, writers, and artists seeing their own period as the rebirth (the "renaissance") of classical values after the Middle Ages. The classical world was considered the golden age for the arts, literature, philosophy, and politics. Concepts of the classical, however, changed greatly from one period to the next. Roman literature provided the starting point in the 14th century, scholars patiently finding, editing and translating a wide range of texts. In the 15th century Greek literature, philosophy and art - together with the close study of the remains of Roman buildings and sculptures-expanded the concept of the classical and ensured it remained a vital source of ideas and inspiration. generation trained there, including Carle Vernet, Jean-Baptiste Regnault, Jean-Joseph Taillasson and Henri-Pierre Danloux. His early success was doubtless facilitated by his father's reputation and by the friendship of Charles-Nicolas Cochin II, who had succeeded Bernard Lépicié as Secrétaire Perpétuel to the Académie Royale in 1755 and owned at least five of Nicolas-Bernard's works.

Nicolas-Bernard Lépicié painted portraits, domestic genre scenes, and historical subjects. His best works, although not entirely free from the sentimentality of the period, have something of the tranquil beauty associated with Chardin.