Charles Bourgeois (1759-1832) - Portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Héron

Charles Guillaume Alexandre BOURGEOIS
(Amiens, 1759 – Paris, 1832)

Portrait of Mr. Heron
And
Portrait of Mrs Héron, née Teissier

Oil on panel and oil on paper
Monogrammed and dated on one
16.5 x 13.5 cm each
1820

Charles Bourgeois was born in Amiens on December 16, 1759 but made his artistic, professional and scientific career in Paris.

He is one of those few rare characters who have managed to combine artistic and scientific skills. He actually had three professions.
To begin with, he was a painter, to be more precise a miniaturist, and in this capacity, he knew perfectly how to combine colors and produce the most varied tints, tones, and shades.
He then owned and ran a color business established at the Quai de l'École in Paris, now Quai du Louvre, where he manufactured and sold to painters of pictures and decorative painters a whole range of pigments, lacquers, oils, colors, and varnishes. In addition, it was at the Quai de l'École that he developed new pigments, in particular the group of cobalt blues and lakes, including his madder carmine, very useful for the precise reproduction of facial complexions.
Finally, Bourgeois was also involved in scientific research around the optics of colors, both theoretical and experimental research. As such, he had become a member in 1820 of the Royal Academic Society of Sciences of Paris, a society founded by Jacques-Louis Doussin-Dubreuil in 1800, which became royal in 1814, and which had about seventy-five members in 1820.

To return to his artistic talents, Bourgeois was probably a pupil of the Hessian engraver Jean-Georges Wille (1715-1808) in his early days, and it is proven by the Salon booklets that he later passed through the workshop of the miniaturist Franz Peter Joseph Kymli (c.1748-c.1813) until the 1800s.
Charles Bourgeois was therefore present at the Paris Salon from 1800 until 1824. He exclusively practiced portraiture there but on all types of materials: mainly in miniature, sent some works on porcelain and more rarely paintings to oil, probably in small formats.
Renowned in his time for his talent, Boilly even painted his portrait twice: once alone and a second time by making him appear in his painting at the Salon of 1798: Réunion d'artistes dans l'atelier d'Isabey.
Our artist died in Paris on May 7, 1832 and was buried in the Montmartre cemetery.

Museums: Louvre, Carnavalet, Cognacq-Jay…