Alexandre-François Desportes

Alexandre-François Desportes, baptized on February 16, 1661 in Champigneulle and died in Paris in 1743, is a French painter, specializing in animal painting (mainly dogs), still life and hunting scenes.

François Desportes is the son of Pierre Desportes, a rich farmer, and Elisabeth Dugay. He was sent in 1673 to one of his uncles established in Paris, where he trained with Nicasius Bernaerts, a pupil of Frans Snyders. With this master, he is imbued with the Flemish tradition but tempered the violence and ardor of these baroque compositions to the benefit of a more measured art.

After a visit to the royal factory of the Gobelins in 1692-1693, he became portraitist of the Court of Poland in 1695-1696. Back in France, he turned away from the portrait to devote himself to interior decoration. He was received at the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture as an "animal painter" in 1699.

From 1700 until his death, he executed many paintings to adorn the royal mansions (Versailles, Marly, Meudon, Compiegne and Choisy). Louis XIV, then Louis XV commanded him the portrait of their favorite dogs.

He received many commissions for decorative panels for the royal châteaux: Versailles, Marly, Meudon, Compiègne and, his last royal commission, for Louis XV at Choisy, 1742. He also did decorative paintings for the duc de Bourbon at Chantilly. Both Louis XIV and Louis XV commissioned portraits of their favorite hunting dogs.

Desportes would follow the royal hunt with a small notebook he carried to make on-site sketches for still lives of the game that resulted from the day's hunt, for the king to make a choice of which were to be worked up into finished paintings. In several paintings he combined game with a buffet of spectacular pieces of silver as they might be displayed in a dining room; these are precious documents of the lost silver of the reign of Louis XIV.

His details of trophies of game or animals were used in cartoons for tapestry in which work of several painters was combined, woven at the Savonnerie and at the Gobelins (Portière de Diane, Louvre). For the Gobelins he designed the series of tapestries called Les Nouvelles Indes.

At his death, in Paris, he left a considerable amount of work in his studio (where his nephew Nicolas had trained), which included studies of animals and plants as well as some fox-hunting sketches by Jan Fyt. In 1784, the comte d'Angiviller, general director of the Bâtiments du Roi acquired these resources for painter's models at the manufactory of Sèvres porcelain, so that Desportes' influence in the iconography of French arts extended almost throughout the century.

Desportes, a painter of the hunts and the royal pack, follows the king during his hunts. Saint-Simon relates that "he usually went hunting with him, with a small wallet to draw on the spot their various attitudes, between which the king chose, and always with taste, those he preferred to other. "

Artwork:
At his death, Desportes left an important shop floor. It consists of studies of animals, plants and landscapes painted after nature, as well as some sketches by Jan Fyt, such as those in fox hunting.

In 1784, the Count d'Angiviller, General Manager of the King's buildings, acquired this fund for the Sèvres factory to serve as a model for porcelain painters. After having served as an iconographic source for more than a century, the studies were deposited in several institutions. The museum of hunting and nature in Paris has collected an important part of the animal works. The Louvre Museum has its portrait painted by itself and several of its best paintings. An entire room of the International Museum of the Hunting in Gien is devoted to him. The Senlis Venetian Museum exhibits its Hallali deer and Fox Hunting, as well as other works.
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