Charles-Joseph Natoire

Gustaf Lundberg's portrait of Charles-Joseph Natoire (Musée du Louvre). Charles-Joseph Natoire (3 March 1700 – 23 August 1777) was a French painter in the Rococo manner, a pupil of François Lemoyne and director of the French Academy in Rome, 1751–1775. Considered during his lifetime the equal of François Boucher, he played a prominent role in the artistic life of France.

He is remembered above all for the series of the History of Psyche for Germain Boffrand's oval salon de la Princesse in the Hôtel de Soubise, Paris, and for the tapestry cartoons for the series of the History of Don Quixote, woven at the Beauvais tapestry manufacture, most of which are present at the Château de Compiègne.

First Roman stay (1723–1729) He was born in Nîmes. His sister, Jeanne, was a pastellist.

Natoire's father Florent Natoire, a sculptor, gave him his fundamental training in drawing, then sent him to Paris in 1717 to complete his training, first in the atelier of Louis Galloche (1670–1761), peintre du Roi and professor at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, and then in the atelier of François Lemoyne, whose training shaped Natoire's style. Later, as a history painter, Natoire would instruct students at the Royal Academy.

In 1721 he was awarded the Prix de Rome from the French Académie Royale with a Sacrifice of Manoah to obtain a son. On 30 June 1723 he was appointed a pensionnaire at the French Academy in Rome, at the time lodged in the Palazzo Mancini, where he arrived in October. During his stay he executed a copy of Pietro da Cortona's Rape of the Sabine Women. In December 1725 he won a first prize from the Accademia di San Luca with a Moses Returning from Sinai. From 1741, he produced a series of cartoons for the History of Mark Anthony woven at the Gobelins.

In 1747, he painted the portrait of Louis, Dauphin of France. In a more familiar vein, he provided a Saint Stephen and the False Witnesses for the chapelle Saint-Symphorien in the Church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, 1745. A major loss was his illusionistic decor for the chapel in the Hôpital des Enfants-Trouvés (1746–1750), built by Germain Boffrand but demolished in the 19th century.

He was ennobled in April 1753 and received the Order of Saint-Michel, an honour he had impatiently awaited, but he found himself out of sympathy with the new neoclassical style that was being developed by the Academy's pensionnaires. His own fresco of the Apotheosis of Saint Louis for the French national Church of San Luigi dei Francesi, 1754–1756, came in for criticism.

Natoire's late work, in the two decades that remained to him was largely confined to numerous drawings of the Campagna for his own pleasure, and few canvasses. He became more religious.

In 1767, the architect Adrien Mouton, who had been expelled from the Academy, brought a suit that he won in 1770: Natoire was fined 20,000 livres and court costs with interest, accused of administrative errors. The new general director of the Bâtiments, the comte d'Angiviller retired Natoire from office in June 1775.

He withdrew to Castel Gandolfo, where he died. He was 77 years old.

Gallery of selected work