Draughtsman, etcher and painter, part of a French family of artists, brother of Charles-Germain de Saint-Aubin. He studied with the painters Etienne Jeaurat and Hyacinthe Colin de Vermont, but failed three times to win 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.. He broke with the Académie Royale, preferring to support and exhibit at the Académie de St Luc. Although he continued to paint such pictures as A Street Show in Paris (c. 1760; London, National GalleryGLOSSARYan upper story, similar to a tribune, running along the side of a building and open on one side to the interior; in a church (basilica) above the side aisles, over the ambulatory (central-plan building) and also over the west end. The gallery was used to keep certain groups of worshippers apart (women, noblemen).; other examples in Rouen, Musée des Beaux-Arts), he is best known as a draughtsman and etcher. He was a passionate and unconventional observer of the sights of the Paris streets and of the social scene. In his many drawings he combined pencil, black and red chalk, bistre, inkGLOSSARYColoured fluid used for writing, drawing, or printing. Inks usually have staining power without body, but printers' inks are pigments mixed with oil and varnish, and are opaque. The use of inks goes back in China and Egypt to at least 2500 BC. They were usually made from lampblack (a pigment made from soot) or a red ochre ground into a solution of glue or gums. These materials were moulded into dry sticks or blocks, which were then mixed with water for use. Ink brought from China or Japan in such dry form came to be known in the West as 'Chinese ink' or 'Indian ink'. The names are also given to a similar preparation made in Europe. and watercolourGLOSSARYPigment ground in gum, usually gum arabic, and applied with brush and water to a painting surface, usually paper; the term also denotes a work of art executed in this medium. The pigment is ordinarily transparent but can be made opaque by mixing with a whiting and in this form is known as body colour, or gouache; it can also be mixed with casein, a phosphoprotein of milk. Watercolour compares in range and variety with any other painting method. Transparent watercolour allows for a freshness and luminosity in its washes and for a deft calligraphic brushwork that makes it a most alluring medium. There is one basic difference between transparent watercolour and all other heavy painting mediums - its transparency. The oil painter can paint one opaque colour over another until he has achieved his desired result. The whites are created with opaque white. The watercolourist's approach is the opposite. In essence, instead of building up he leaves out. The white paper creates the whites. The darkest accents may be placed on the paper with the pigment as it comes out of the tube or with very little water mixed with it. Otherwise the colours are diluted with water. The more water in the wash, the more the paper affects the colours; for example, vermilion, a warm red, will gradually turn into a cool pink as it is thinned with more water. The dry-brush technique - the use of the brush containing pigment but little water, dragged over the rough surface of the paper - creates various granular effects similar to those of crayon drawing. Whole compositions can be made in this way. This technique also may be used over dull washes to enliven them. to create dazzling spontaneous effects. He drew incidents that struck him as he wandered the streets, or entertainments that he attended. He recorded them, noting dates and times, in sketchbooks or sometimes in the margins and blank pages of printed books that he was carrying. These drawings of contemporary incidents include the Fire at the Foire Saint-Germain on the Night of 16-17 May 1762 (private collection) and the Crowning of Voltaire at the Théâtre-Français in 1778 (Paris, Louvre).
He went regularly to 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 the Académie Royale and to art sales, covering the margins and flyleaves of his sale catalogues and Salon livrets with tiny sketches of works of art and the passing scene. One hundred of these illustrated catalogues were among his effects when he died, and of these about a third survive. These include the livrets for the Salons of 1761, 1769 and 1777 (all Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale), as well as the catalogues of the sales of Louis-Michel van Loo in 1772 and Charles Natoire in 1778 (both Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale), and that of Pierre-Jean Mariette in 1775 (Boston, Museum of Fine Arts). Together with his etchings and large watercolours (e.g. Paris, Louvre) of the Louvre's Salon Carré at the time of the exhibitions of 1753, 1767 and 1769, they constitute a precious record of Paris art life in the 18th century.
Saint-Aubin, despite the charm of his work, had a largely unsuccessful career, and at his death his older brother wrote a severe biographical account, deploring his paintings and the confused existence he led. He painfully failed several times to gain first prize at the Académie and eventually became a member of the Académie de Saint-Luc.
