Célestin François Nanteuil

b. 1813 — d. 1873

Growing up in an artistic family-his father, Robert, was a scenographer and his brother Charles François (1792-1865) a sculptor-Célestin Nanteuil first apprenticed with Jean Charles Langlois (1789-1870) and then with Ingres (q.v.). In 1827 he entered the Paris École des Beaux-Arts but was expelled two years later over a dispute with a professor. Nanteuil befriended Victor Hugo and started designing frontispieces for the author's writings. Accompanied by Théophile Gautier, Nanteuil was present at the famous Bataille d'Hernani in 1830, when Victor Hugo's unconventional poetic drama was loudly booed by the traditionalists but so hailed by its partisans that it paved the way for the young romantics' success. Endowed with a lively imagination, Nanteuil throughout his life interpreted writers, musicians, and poets, making prints in an often gothic style that matched the historicizing texts. Using either lithography or etching, he also made numerous reproductions of the paintings of his contemporaries, among them Couture (q.v.), Decamps (q.v.), Delacroix (q.v.), and Meissonier (q.v.). Even if his richest form of expression remains his printmaking, Nanteuil was also a painter. Unfortunately, most of his painted oeuvre has disappeared. For this reason, In the Forest is especially important as evidence of Nanteuil's painterly activity. It is also a reminder that he was a devotee of Barbizon, where, at the Auberge Ganne, he left a panel painted in collaboration with Théodore Rousseau (q.v.). Nanteuil received medals at the Salons of 1837, 1848, and 1861 and the Paris World Exhibition of 1867, and the following year he earned the cross of the Legion of Honor. In 1867 he became the director of the Dijon museum and that city's École des Beaux-Arts.