Eustache Le Sueur

1640–1645, Hermitage Museum, St.

Training under Simon Vouet is recorded. Thomas_Goussé is recorded as having studied under Eustache Le Sueur. The recorded working language is French. The field of work recorded is painting. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are portrait, history and genre. Places of work recorded in the authority are Paris. Works named in the authority record are Madonna and Child with Saint John the Baptist and Death of St Bruno. Work by Eustache Le Sueur is recorded in the collections of Städel Museum, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, J. Paul Getty Museum and Nationalmuseum.

He was born in Paris, where he spent his entire life. His father, Cathelin Le Sueur, a turner and sculptor in wood, placed him with Vouet, in whose studio he rapidly distinguished himself. Admitted at an early age into the guild of master-painters, he left them to take part in establishing the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1648 and was elected as one of the original twelve elders in charge of its administration. • Illustration — Rape of Tamar, c. 1640 Some paintings, illustrative of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, which were reproduced in tapestry, brought him notice, and his reputation was further enhanced by a series of decorations (Louvre) in the mansion of Lambert de Thorigny, which he left uncompleted, for their execution was frequently interrupted by other commissions. Amongst these were several pictures for the apartments of the king and queen in the Louvre, which are now missing, although they were entered in Bailly's inventory (1710); but several works produced for minor patrons have come down to us. In the gallery of the Louvre are the Angel and Hagar, from the mansion of De Tonnay Charente; Tobias and Tobit, from the Fieubet collection; several pictures executed for the church of Saint Gervais; the Martyrdom of St Lawrence, from Saint Germain de l'Auxerrois; two works from the destroyed abbey of Marmoutiers; St Paul preaching at Ephesus, painted for the goldsmiths corporation in 1649; and his series of the Life of St Bruno, executed in the cloister of the Chartreux. Le Sueur was also a prolific draftsman and many of his chalk drawings are in the Louvre's Cabinet des Dessins. His pupils, who aided him much in his work, were his wife's brother, Theodore Goussé, and three brothers of his own, as well as Claude Lefèbvre and Pierre Patel the landscape painter. Most of his works have been engraved, chiefly by Picart, B. Audran, Leclerc, Drevet, Chauveau, Poilly and Desplaces.

According to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, it was considered that Le Sueur's work lent itself readily to the engraver's art, as he had a delicate perception of varied shades of grave and elevated sentiment, and possessed the power to render them. His graceful facility in composition was always restrained by a very fine taste, but his works often fail to please completely, because, producing so much, he had too frequent recourse to conventional types, and partly because he rarely saw colour except with the cold and clayey quality proper to the school of Vouet; yet his St Paul at Ephesus and one or two other works show that he was not naturally deficient in this sense, and whenever we get direct reference to nature—as in the monks of the St Bruno series—we recognize his admirable power to read and render physiognomy of varied and serious type.

• Illustration — The Annunciation, (1650) • Illustration — The Muses: Clio, Euterpe and Thalia (between 1652 and 1655), Louvre • Illustration — Melpomene, Erato and Polyhymnia (1650s), Louvre • Illustration — An Allegory of Poetry • Illustration — Bacchus and Ariadne (about 1640) Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (68.764) • Illustration — Meeting of friends, Louvre Museum (around 1640) • Illustration — Camma Offers the Poisoned Wedding Cup to Synorix in the Temple of Diana (c. 1644), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston • Illustration — The Triumph of Galatea (1643–1644), private collection • Illustration — Christ on the Cross with the Magdalen, the Virgin Mary and Saint John the Evangelist (1643) • Illustration — Meeting of friends, (around 1640), Paris, Louvre Museum.