| Guillaume Guillon-Lethière | |
| Birth Date: | 1760 1, df=y |
| Birth Place: | Sainte-Anne, Guadeloupe |
| Death Place: | Paris, France |
| Nationality: | French |
| Movement: | Neoclassicism |
| Patrons: | Jean-Baptiste Descamps, Gabriel-François Doyen |
| Awards: | Prix de Rome, Second Grand Prize |
Guillaume Guillon-Lethière (in French gijom gijɔ̃ lətjɛʁ/; 10 January 1760 - 22 April 1832) was a French Neoclassical painter.
He was born out of wedlock, to Marie-Françoise Dupepaye, a free person of color, and Pierre Guillon, a colonial Royal Notary.[1] He and his sister, Andrèze, could not be legally recognized as Guillon's children until 1794, when the Code Noir was abolished.
In 1774, after displaying an early aptitude for art, his father took him to France, where he was placed with the painter Jean-Baptiste Descamps, at the new free drawing school in Rouen. It was there that he adopted the name "Lethière", derived from "letier" (third, as in "third son"). He remained there for three years, then went to Paris and became a student of Gabriel François Doyen at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture.[1] Those studies lasted until 1786. During that time, he paid frequent visits to the studio of Jacques-Louis David.
He won second prize in the Prix de Rome of 1784 for his painting Woman of Canaan at the Feet of Christ. Two years later, he entered again and, while he did not win, he succeeded in receiving support to travel to Rome, where he further developed his Neoclassical style. In 1787, he too had a son out of wedlock, with a woman named Marie-Agathe Lapôtre. In 1792, he returned to Paris and opened his own painting studio.[2] He held his first exhibit at the Salon in 1795, with paintings he had created in Rome.
In 1799, he married the widow, Marie-Joseph-Honorée Vanzenne. A daughter from her first marriage, Eugénie, would also become a painter.
The following year, he accompanied the newly appointed Ambassador, Lucien Bonaparte, to Spain, where he helped him build an art collection. Through Bonaparte's recommendation, he was appointed Director of the French Academy in Rome in 1807. He served in that position until 1816, when he was replaced, by order of King Louis XVIII.[3]
In 1818 he was elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts. That same year, he also became a Knight in the Legion of Honor.[4] A year later, he became a professor at the École des Beaux-Arts.[2] He ended his career as a member of the Institut de France.
His numerous well-known students included Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran, Jean-Louis Gintrac, François Bouchot, Louis Boulanger, Eugène Devéria, Louis Joseph César Ducornet, Hortense Haudebourt-Lescot, Isidore Pils, Théodore Rousseau, Kanuty Rusiecki, Octave Tassaert, and his stepdaughter, Eugénie.