Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer (12 January 1636 – 20 February 1699) was a Franco-Flemish painter who specialised in flower pieces. He was attached to the

Gobelins tapestry The Gobelins Manufactory () is a historic tapestry factory in Paris, France. It is located at 42 avenue des Gobelins, near Les Gobelins métro station in the 13th arrondissement of Paris. It was originally established on the site as a medieva ...

workshops and the

Beauvais tapestry The Beauvais Manufactory () is a historic tapestry factory in Beauvais, France. It was the second in importance, after the Gobelins Manufactory, of French tapestry workshops that were established under the general direction of Jean-Baptiste Colb ...

workshops, too, where he produced cartoons of fruit and flowers for the tapestry-weavers, and at Beauvais was one of three painters who collaborated to produce cartoons for the suite ''The Emperor of China''.

Life

He was born at

Lille Lille ( , ; nl, Rijsel ; pcd, Lile; vls, Rysel) is a city in the northern part of France, in French Flanders. On the river Deûle, near France's border with Belgium, it is the capital of the Hauts-de-France region, the prefecture of the No ...

, but was in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...

by 1650, where he was documented working on the decors of the

Hôtel Lambert The Hôtel Lambert () is a ''hôtel particulier,'' a grand mansion townhouse, on the Quai Anjou on the eastern tip of the Île Saint-Louis, in the 4th arrondissement of Paris. In the 19th century, the name ''Hôtel Lambert'' also came to designa ...

. He was taken up by

Charles Le Brun Charles Le Brun (baptised 24 February 1619 – 12 February 1690) was a French painter, physiognomist, art theorist, and a director of several art schools of his time. As court painter to Louis XIV, who declared him "the greatest French artist of ...

for decorative painting at the

Château de Marly The Château de Marly was a French royal residence located in what is now Marly-le-Roi, the commune on the northern edge of the royal park. This was situated west of the palace and garden complex at Versailles. Marly-le-Roi is the town that develo ...

and at the Grand Dauphin's residence, the

Château de Meudon Meudon Castle, also known as the Royal Castle of Meudon or Imperial Palace of Meudon, is a French castle located in Meudon in the Hauts-de-Seine department. At the edge of a wooded plateau, the castle offers views of Paris and the Seine, as we ...

. He was received at the

Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture The Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture (; en, "Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture") was founded in 1648 in Paris, France. It was the premier art institution of France during the latter part of the Ancien Régime until it was abo ...

in 1665 with a piece of the genre that he made his specialty, a still life of flowers and fruit combined with ''

objets d'art In art history, the French term Objet d’art describes an ornamental work of art, and the term Objets d’art describes a range of works of art, usually small and three-dimensional, made of high-quality materials, and a finely-rendered finish th ...

''. His only appearance at the

Paris salon The Salon (french: Salon), or rarely Paris Salon (French: ''Salon de Paris'' ), beginning in 1667 was the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Between 1748 and 1890 it was arguably the greatest annual or biennial ar ...

was in 1673, when four paintings of flowers were exhibited by "M. Baptiste". Monnoyer Jean-Baptiste 03

In 1690, he left France for England, to work on painting decorations for

Montagu House, Bloomsbury Montagu House (sometimes spelled "Montague") was a late 17th-century mansion in Great Russell Street in the Bloomsbury district of London, which became the first home of the British Museum. The first house on the site was destroyed by fire in ...

, London, where he produced over fifty panels of fruit and flowers for overmantels and

overdoor An "overdoor" (or "Supraporte" as in German, or "sopraporte" as in Italian) is a painting, bas-relief or decorative panel, generally in a horizontal format, that is set, typically within ornamental mouldings, over a door, or was originally intend ...

s, some of which have survived at

Boughton House Boughton House is a country house in the parish of Weekley in Northamptonshire, England, situated about north-east of Kettering. It is situated within an estate of . The present house was built by Ralph Montagu, 1st Duke of Montagu (d.1709) ...

, Northamptonshire. He died in London in 1699.

Family

One of his sons,

Antoine Monnoyer Antoine Monnoyer (1670 – 1747), was a French painter. Biography He was born in Paris as the son and pupil of Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer.

(died 1747), called 'Young Baptiste,' was a painter of flowers. Another of his sons, known as 'Frere Baptiste,' who went to Rome and became a Dominican friar, and a painter.

Works

His suites of engravings, most notably ''Le Livre de toutes sortes de fleurs d'après nature'' show flowers with botanical accuracy and served decorative designers for decades. Monnoyer's engravings of flower pieces were being used by tapestry makers, such as at the

Soho tapestry Soho is an area of the City of Westminster, part of the West End of London. Originally a fashionable district for the aristocracy, it has been one of the main entertainment districts in the capital since the 19th century. The area was develop ...

works in London, long after his death. In the twentieth century the poet

Wallace Stevens Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was an American modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as an executive for an insurance compa ...

invoked Monnoyer's title ''Livre de toutes sortes de fleurs d'après nature'' in his philosophical poem "Esthéthique du Mal", whose centrality to Stevens' work was stressed by

Harold Bloom Harold Bloom (July 11, 1930 – October 14, 2019) was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was described as "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking worl ...

; for Stevens "all sorts of flowers" epitomized the anodyne and sentimental poem, attempting to address and assuage "all sorts of misfortune".Noted by Kevin Crotty, ''Law's Interior: Legal and Literary Constructions of the Self'', "Rationality and imagination in the law" (Cornell University Press) 2001:179.

Notes

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Monnoyer, Jean-Baptiste 17th-century French painters French male painters 1636 births 1699 deaths