Joseph Marie Vien

Joseph Marie Vien, born June 18, 1716 in Montpellier and died March 27, 1809 in Paris, was a French painter. He studied with Charles-Joseph Natoire and Charles Parrocel at the Académie Royale. Vien won the Premier Prix de Peinture in 1743 and arrived a year later in Rome, where he remained until 1750. Vien was part of the first generation of artists to discover the benefits of recent excavations in Rome, and to follow the establishment of collections in the Capitoline Museum. The lessons he drew from this period of his life make him one of the leading exponents of neoclassicism. He was director of the Académie de France in Rome from 1775 to 1781. He went on to teach at the School of Painting and Sculpture, and had many pupils, notably Jacques-Louis David and François-André Vincent.

1775-1781