François Édouard Bertin (Paris, 1797 - Paris, 1871)

Edouard Bertin enrolled as a pupil of Anne-Louis Girodet at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1815, and the following year also began studying with the landscape painter Jean-Joseph Bidauld. Later in his career he spent some time in the studio of Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres, who in 1832 was to paint a celebrated portrait of Bertin’s father, the founder and editor of the Journal des débats. The younger Bertin competed unsuccessfully for the Prix de Rome* in 1821, in the category of the paysage historique, and later that year made his first visit to Italy.

Bertin made eleven separate visits to Italy, spending a total of some eighteen years in the country, whose...