The painter, draftsman and graphic artist Jean-Antoine Constantin was born in 1756. Constantin studied from 1771 at the Academy of Marseille under Joseph Antoine David. Constantin continued his artistic education in Rome in 1777, where he stayed for six years and developed an independent, nature-oriented landscape. In the years that followed, Constantin created a series of pre-nature studies in Italy that were among the earliest evidence of Plein Air. Around 1783 Constantin returned to Aix prematurely due to illness, where he was appointed director of the local drawing school a little later. As a landscape teacher and teacher, Constantin had a significant influence on the development of the Provencal landscape school in the first half o...