PAUL DELAROCHE

Delaroche came out of the tradition of late eighteenth-century French history painting, represented by artists such as François-André Vincent (1746-1817) who focused on episodes from French history. Ever since Louis XVI's Directeur des Bâtiments, D'Angiviller conceived of the Grands hommes (Great Men) series both in painting and sculpture, the trend was set for accurate, realistic depictions of subjects from Medieval, Renaissance, and modern history, frequently treated as historical genre, in a lighter vein.

Hippolyte (Paul) Delaroche, painter of the sensational Execution of Jane Grey in the Tower of London (1834; National Gallery, London), represented a transition from the classic to ...