ROUSSEAU DE LA ROTTIERE, JEAN SIMEON (b. 1747)

This article appears in Volume V23, Page 780 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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ROUSSEAU DE LA ROTTIERE, JEAN SIMEON (b. 1747) , French decorative painter, was the youngest son of Jules Antoine Rousseau, "sculpteur du Roi." The territorial addition to his patronymic has never been explained, but it is known to have been in use when he was little more than a boy. He studied at the Academic Royale, where we find him in September 1768 winning the medal given to the best painter of the quarter. He appears with his brother Jules Hugues to have been employed from an early date by his father for the decorative

work

WORK

executed by the family at

Versailles

VERSAILLES

. There has been some controversy among the authorities as to the respective shares of father and son in these works, but many of the attributions are fairly determined by

dates

DATES

, Jules Antoine Rousseau having been at

work

WORK

Versailles

VERSAILLES

for years before the

birth

BIRTH (a word common in various forms to Teutonic languages from the root of the verb " to bear ")

of his famous son. The " Bains du Roi," the " Salon de la Meridienne," part of the bedchamber of Madame Adelaide, and the "Garde-robe of Louis XVI." were among the achievements which there can be little doubt were shared in by Rousseau de la Rottiere. His most individual and most famous undertaking was, however, the decoration of the lovely " Boudoir de Madame de Sevilly," now at the Victoria and Albert Museum. This little room, 14 ft. long, ,oa ft. wide and 16 ft. high, was removed from the

house

in the Rue de Saint Louis, in the Marais. The Seigneur de Sevilly, who was hereditary " Tresorier general de 1'Extraordinaire des guerres " under Louis XVI., married his

cousin

Anne Marie Louise de Pange, a favourite maid-of-honour of Marie Antoinette, and the story runs that his wife and the queen, desiring to give him a surprise, had the room decorated during his absence from Paris. It was purchased for the museum for 6o,000 francs in 1869. The

wall

WALL (O. Eng. weal, weall, Mid. Eng. wal, wane, adapted from Lat. vallum, rampart; the
original
- ORIGINAL
O. Eng. word for a wall was wag or tenth)
WALL, RICHARD (1694-1778)

paintings of this sumptuous room came from the hand of Rousseau de la Rottiere; the overdoor and part of the ceiling were executed by Lagrenee le jeune; the architect was Ledoux; the grey marble figures of aged men on either side of the fire-place were sculptured by Clodion; the mounts of the chimney-piece are apparently from the chisel of Gouthiere. The date of the room is assigned to 178182, and Jean Simeon's authorship of much of its decoration is rendered certain by his own still existing sketch. The decoration is Pompeian in feeling, and in the main its taste is admirable; the execution is of the highest excellence. The tall narrow panels are painted in medallions with amorini; festoons and bouquets of

flowers

FLOWERS, ARTIFICIAL

fill every available space; the shutters are painted with doves and shepherdesses. Lagrenee's pictures in the upper' lunettes represent the elements; upon the ceiling is Jupiter en-throned within a deep blue border. The perfection of detail, the unity of the whole composition, the dexterity with which so small a chamber, lofty out of proportion to its length and width,
has been picked out with recessed arches, the tenderness of its

scheme

SCHEME (Lat. schema, Gr. oxfjya, figure, form, from the root axe, seen in exeiv, to have, hold, to be of such shape, form, &c.)

of colour, combine to produce an exquisite effect. It is a melancholy reflection that M. de Sevilly, whom his wife and Marie Antoinette combined to surprise with this chefd'ceuvre, was guillotined, and that his wife, whose sitting-room it was, was condemned to die with him and with Madame Elisabeth de France, whom they had befriended, but was saved, against her will, by the princess, who made a false declaration as to her condition. She had two subsequent husbands, and lost them both in little more than two years. She herself lived less than five years after her delivery by the fall of Robespierre. There is no information as to Rousseau's later life. The last known mention of him is in 1792.

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