Julien Le Blant

Julien Le Blant (March 30, 1851 – February 28, 1936) was a French painter who specialised in military art, focusing on the War in the Vendée. Because he came from a family from the Bas-Poitou, part of the old province of Poitou, Le Blant was descended from the French "Blancs" who had opposed the French Revolution and was thus in sympathy with those who rose up and formed the Catholic and Royal Army of the Vendée. He spent his artistic career commemorating the events of the rebellion in large works that were exhibited in the annual Paris Salon.

Le Blant was a much honored painter and he won a Bronze Medal at the Salon in 1878, a Silver Medal in 1880 and a Gold Medal at the 1889 Exposition Universelle, the Paris World's Fair that commemorated the centennial of the beginning of the French Revolution. Le Blant was also a prolific illustrator, contributing more than five hundred illustrations to dozens of books. Le Blant's last major accomplishment was a large series of drawings, watercolors and paintings of French soldiers on their way home from and departing to the front during the First World War. His work is in a number of public collections, but primarily in France because the subjects he specialized in did not command great popularity abroad.

Biography

Childhood and training

Le Blant was born in 1851, the first son of Edmond-Frederic Le Blant (1818–1897) and Marie Louise Gasparine Lemaire Le Blant. His father was trained as an attorney, but he became a famous biblical archaeologist. His mother died soon after giving birth to her son and Juilen was raised by a stepmother.