Benjamin Rolland


Benjamin Rolland, or Benjamin de Rolland, was a French history painter and student of David. He held a number of high-profile art appointments, including court painter; museum curator and director; and art academy professor and director.

Biography

Benjamin de Rolland was born in 1773, on the island of Guadeloupe and was of French Creole descent and Carcassonne nobility. He left Guadeloupe around the age of 13 to pursue his education in Paris, France.
De Rolland befriended and studied with Guillaume Guillon-Lethière at his atelier in Rue Childebert, Saint-Germain-des-Prés, who brought together a whole French Caribbean society in Paris, under the leadership of Joséphine de Beauharnais, such as General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas with his son, the writer Alexandre Dumas père and Chevalier de Saint-George.
A student of Jacques-Louis David in the late 1790s before being appointed court painter in 1807 and tutoring King Joachim Murat's children at the Royal Palaces of Caserta and Naples. He painted many neoclassical portraits of members of the royal and aristocratic families.
From 1817 to 1853, he served as the director and curator of the Museum of Grenoble. De Rolland also directed and taught at the city's School of Painting and Drawing, where his students included the artists Ernest Hébert, Théodore Fantin-Latour, Jules Guédy, Alexandre Debelle, Victor Sappey and Eugénie Chosson du Colombier.
Benjamin de Rolland exhibited regularly at the Paris Salons, held at the Louvre Palace in 1801, 1806, 1808, 1817, 1819, 1822, and 1824.
The Louvre, the Musée d'Orsay, the Musée de Grenoble, the Museum of [Fine Arts of Lyon|Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon], Museo Mario Praz and the Royal Palace of Caserta are among the cultural institutions that have a number of his paintings in their permanent collections.

Museum collections

Iconography