Paul Delaroche

Historical painter Paul Delaroche (1797-1856) achieved immense popularity through dramatic scenes from English and French history. Born Hippolyte Delaroche in Paris, he trained under landscape painter Louis-Etienne Watelet before studying with history painter Antoine-Jean Gros. His approach blended the polished technique of Neoclassicism with the emotional drama of Romanticism, a middle ground the French called juste milieu.

Delaroche specialized in Tudor and Stuart history, which French audiences found exotic and compelling. The Children of Edward (1831), showing the doomed princes in the Tower of London, established his reputation. The Execution of Lady Jane Grey (1833) became one of the century's most popular paintings. It depicts the blindfolded teenage queen reaching for the execution block, her white dress radiant against the dark chamber. The theatrical staging and emotional intensity drew enormous crowds at the Paris Salon. Delaroche also painted French subjects, including Bonaparte Crossing the Alps (1850), which showed Napoleon on a mule rather than the heroic stallion of David's version. He held a professorship at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Lady Jane Grey, thought destroyed in the 1928 Thames flood, was rediscovered rolled up in 1973 and restored. It now hangs at the National Gallery London, where it remains enormously popular. The Wallace Collection and Hermitage also hold significant works.