RICHARD, Fleury-François

French painter from Lyon, a city which suffered much political upheaval during the revolution. In 1796 he went to Paris and entered the studio of Jacques-Louis David, where he rejoined fellow Lyonnais Pierre Révoil and became friends with Auguste Forbin and became friends with François-Marius Granet. These artists formed a splinter group in the studio and rejected their master's NeoclassicismGLOSSARYA style in European art and architecture from the mid 18th century until the end of the 19th century. Based as it was on the use of ancient Greek and Roman models and motifs, its development was greatly influenced by the excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum, and by the theories of the German art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768). Intellectually and politically it was closely linked to the Enlightenment's rejection of the aristocratic frivolity of Rococo, the style of the Ancien Régime. Among Neoclassicism's leading figures were the French painter Jacques-Louis David (1744-1825), the German painter Anton Raffael Mengs (1728-1729), and the Italian sculptor Antonio Canova (1757-1822). in favour of subjects from modern history and literature. The Musée des Monuments Français, which preserved medieval and renaissance art and architectural artifacts from Revolutionary destruction, was a great inspiration to Richard and his fellow troubadour painters.

Richard exhibited his first troubadour picture, Valentine de Milan, in the SalonGLOSSARYIn the French language of the 18th and 19th centuries it designated an actual exhibition space, as well as the academic art exhibitions staged in the Salon d'Apollon of the Louvre since 1667. From 1737, the exhibitions took place biennially and, after the French Revolution, annually in the Salon Carré of the Louvre in Paris. Towards the end of the 19th century the official Salon jury was dissolved in order to make way for a committee of state-approved artists, i.e. former Salon members, who created the highly influential Société des Artistes Français. of 1802 and was praised by David: "This doesn't resemble anything; it is as new in effect as in colour." Richard was immediately successful. Vivant Denon, Napoleon's artistic advisor wanted him to paint scenes from the life of Napoleon, but Richard avoided modern subjects. Denon remarked on the novelty of the 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. of national history subjects at the 1804 Salon and mentioned Richard as its top exponent.