Sébastien Bourdon

Sébastien Bourdon, February 2, 1616–May 8, 1671, was a French painter and engraver. Born in Montpellier to a Protestant family, he was apprenticed in Paris to the painter Jean Barthélemy. He later worked in Rome, where he studied the art of Nicolas Poussin, Claude Lorrain, Caravaggio and Pieter van Laer.

Bourdon returned to Paris by 1638 and developed a varied practice encompassing religious and mythological subjects, portraits, landscapes and scenes of everyday life. In 1648 he became one of the twelve founding members of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture. Queen Christina of Sweden appointed him her first court painter in 1652.

Bourdon maintained a substantial workshop; his pupils included Nicolas-Pierre Loir and Pierre Mosnier. His paintings are held by the Louvre Museum, the National Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, the Musée Fabre, the Musée des Augustins and other major European and American collections.

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