Joseph-Désiré Court
1797–1865 · France · Academic art, History painting, Neoclassicism
The story
When Joseph-Désiré Court showed his Scene from the Great Flood at the Paris Salon of 1827, he was not allowed to compete for its prizes, because he had recently won the Prix de Rome. The picture, painted in 1826, shows a man straining to save his father from the rising water while a woman holding a child begs him for help. The French state bought it for 3,000 francs, and it hangs today in the Museum of Fine Arts in Lyon.
Court was born in Rouen in 1797 and trained in Paris in the studio of Antoine-Jean Gros, the painter of Napoleon's campaigns. In 1821 he won the Prix de Rome, the state's top prize for young painters, with Samson delivered to the Philistines by Delilah, and spent the next five years at the French Academy in Rome. At the same Salon of 1827 he also showed The Death of Caesar, the picture that made his reputation. Official work followed, including 18 painted panels for the Paris city hall in 1841, and from 1853 until his death in 1865 he was curator of the museum in his native Rouen.
