(b Paris, 26 Dec 1630; d Paris, 30 April 1704). Son of (1) Jacques Blanchard. He trained with his uncle Jean Blanchard and was received (reçu) as a member of the Académie Royale in 1663 with an Allegory of the Birth of Louis XIV (Versailles, Château), which shows the influence of Charles Le Brun both in the style and in its use of allegory. In 1670 he was awarded the prestigious commission to paint the May of Notre-Dame by the Paris Goldsmiths’ Corporation; his altarpiece, St Andrew Trembling with Joy at the Sight of his Torture, survives in situ. He went on to have a successful official career, receiving numerous decorative commissions from the Bâtiments du Roi. The only work of this kind still extant is the Salon de Diane (1674–80) at the château of Versailles, where he collaborated with Claude Audran II and Charles de La Fosse. Blanchard’s contribution was Diana and Endymion and the central compartment of the ceiling (Diana Presiding over Navigation and the Hunt) and four grisaille overdoors. In 1686 he contributed to the decoration of the high altar at Notre-Dame in Paris, painting a Holy Family (Tours, Mus. B.-A.) influenced by Anthony van Dyck’s Virgin with Donors (Paris, Louvre), which had been bought by Louis XIV the year before. Two other paintings by Blanchard are known to survive: a Purification of the Virgin (Toulouse, Mus. Augustins) and an Annunciation (Lyon, St Polycarpe). From 1672 Blanchard was a professor at the Académie Royale, and he delivered a number of lectures, including the influential Discours sur le mérite de la couleur, sur la disposition des couleurs et leurs propriétés (1672), in which he took the side of the pro-colourist Rubénistes in the debate on the relative merits of drawing and colour. His own painting demonstrates his theoretical allegiances, combining the early influence of Le Brun with the family tradition of colourism and the taste of his generation for the art of Flanders and Holland. In 1684 he was sent by Louis XIV to acquire pictures in recently conquered French Flanders.

Part of the Blanchard family

• Blanchard, Gabriel
  • Blanchard
  • France, §III, 3(iii): Painting & graphic arts, c 1620–c 1715: Royal patronage & the Académie Royale
  • collaboration
    • Audran: (1) Claude Audran II
    • Parrocel: (1) Joseph Parrocel
  • dealing
    • France, §XIII, 3: Collecting and dealing: 17th century
  • groups and movements
    • Rubénisme
  • patrons and collectors
    • Brière, Gaston
  • works
    • Choisy-le-Roi