Jacques Blanchard

Jacques Blanchard died in Paris in 1638, only 38 years old, and yet his countrymen went on calling him the Titian of France. The nickname says where his eye had been trained.

Born in Paris in 1600 and taught first by an uncle who painted, Blanchard went south to Italy in his twenties and spent two decisive years in Venice around 1626. He came home saturated in the Venetians, above all Veronese, whose silvery blond light and warm flesh tones he carried back into a French painting that was still rather dry and drawn. In small mythological and religious canvases, a Charity nursing her children, a sleeping nymph, he let colour carry the feeling.

His Paris career lasted barely a decade before his early death, yet critics of the next generation credited him with bringing good taste, le bon goût, back to French art. His brother and his son were painters too.