Coming from a modest artisan background, his provincial training gave him a solid grounding in trompe-l'oeil and portraiture. His move to Paris in 1785 coincided with the pre-revolutionary upheavals that he documented.
meticulously. Between 1789 and 1791, his commissions for the Avignon collector Esprit Calvet established his burgeoning reputation.
His first appearance at the Salon in 1791 revealed a multi-talented artist: portraits, trompe-l'oeil, and genre scenes with sometimes gallant themes. In 1794, accused of obscenity by the Société populaire et républicaine des Arts, he escaped prosecution by presenting patriotic works to the agents of the Committee of Public Safety, notably a "Triumph of Marat" created for a government competition.
This revolutionary period forged his genius as a social observer. His works capture with documentary precision the urban diversity between the Revolution and the Restoration, a time when official painting favored large historical machines. The gold medal at the 1804 Salon confirmed his public popularity.
In 1823, he diversified his output with "Les Grimaces," a humorous lithographic series that demonstrated his adaptation to new media. His appointment as a Knight of the Legion of Honor and member of the Institute in 1833 crowned an exceptionally prolific career.
His family life reflected the challenges of his time: married in 1787 to Marie-Madeleine Desligne, he married Adélaïde-Françoise Leduc in 1795 after the death of his first wife. Father of six sons, he passed on his artistic passion to three of them: Julien Léopold (1796-1874), Édouard (1799-1854) and Alphonse Léopold (1801-1867), who pursued creative careers.
His colossal corpus—around 4,500 portraits (of which only a tenth survive) and 500 genre scenes—constitutes an irreplaceable testimony to French society in transition. Less prized after the Restoration, his work today regains its unique documentary value, offering a privileged window onto daily life during a pivotal period in French history.
