(b Strasbourg, 14 March 1752; d Paris, 24 March 1825). French painter. He studied at the Ecole Publique de Dessin in Strasbourg c. 1768 and in 1772 was admitted to the Académie Royale in Paris, where he was a pupil of Nicolas-Bernard Lépicié between 1776 and 1779. He did not become a member of the Académie and so could not exhibit at the Salon until the French Revolution. He worked for private patrons, producing erotic and pastoral subjects in a style influenced by François Boucher, Jean-Honoré Fragonard and Pierre-Antoine Baudouin; many of these pictures achieved popularity in the form of engravings. His most distinctive paintings are single figures of dancers and young ladies in soft, picturesque landscape settings (e.g. A Dancer, Waddesdon Manor, Bucks, NT). In 1793–4 he painted the Heroism of William Tell (Strasbourg, Mus. B.-A.) but this politically engaged subject was exceptional in his output. Although he continued to paint erotic scenes such as the Peeping Toms (Strasbourg, Mus. B.-A.), his later paintings have a delicate, evocative character that suggests the influence of Pierre-Paul Prud’hon. The moralizing theme and detailed finish of the False Appearance (Strasbourg, Mus. B.-A.), which was awarded a prize in the Salon of 1798, demonstrate Schall’s ability to adapt both style and content to changing tastes. He also illustrated narrative scenes from historical and literary sources, from which series of prints were made, notably by Charles-Melchior Descourtis. Despite the variety of styles in which he worked, Schall is chiefly of interest as a belated exponent of the Rococo whose work became a major source for the Rococo Revival at the time of his death.

• Schall, Jean-Frédéric
  • Descourtis, Charles-Melchior