Paul Antoine Marie Chevandier de Valdrome (17 March 1817, in Saint-Quirin – 2 September 1877, in Hautot-sur-Mer) was a French landscape painter in the Neoclassical style. He also created a few Orientalist works and was a prominent art collector.
His father,, was a Master glassmaker who was also a politician; serving as a member of Parliament from 1821 to 1837, and the Chamber of Peers after that.[1] His brother,, briefly served as Minister of the Interior under Napoleon III.
He studied art with Prosper Marilhat and François-Édouard Picot, but was especially influenced by the landscape painter, Louis-Nicolas Cabat, whom he accompanied on a trip to Italy from 1836 to 1837, following his first exhibit at the Salon. They became lifelong friends.[2] He would continue to travel throughout his life; notably visiting Constantine, Algeria, in 1847.
His Paris studio was in Montmartre and became a meeting place for many notables, such as Félix Ziem, Prince Edmond de Polignac and Frédéric Chopin, who is said to have been inspired to write his Piano Sonata No. 2 during a visit there, when he saw a skeleton that Chevandier was using as a model.[3] Three years earlier, they had produced an illegitimate son, Paul Auguste Armand (1865-1914).
He was named a Chevalier in the Legion of Honor in 1869.[5] During the Franco-Prussian War, he sent his family to safety, but remained behind and helped convert a hotel into a hospital for the wounded. After the war, they reunited and travelled to Switzerland for a vacation, then settled in Marseille.[6]
Soon, however, Jeanne began a liaison with a certain "Baron" Marx Von Pforstein. This resulted in a judicial separation and Paul moved to the North Coast with Armand. After Paul's death Armand, still only twelve, was placed in the custody of the Dominican Fathers in Arcueil; under the supervision of his uncle Eugène. In 1878, Jeanne made an unsuccessful attempt to kidnap Armand during a parental visit, creating a scandal that was covered widely in the press.[7] Armand went on to become a diplomat. In 1914, he was murdered at the French Embassy in Tangier, by a cook who had been dismissed for alcoholism.[8]
In 1868, against the wishes of his family, he married Jeanne Émilie Lelarge (1845-1898), an actress who performed at the Théâtre de l'Ambigu-Comique and the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin under the stage name Jeanne (or Émilie) Defodon.[3]