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Historical Artist - Charles-Antoine Coypel (1694 - 1752)
Charles-Antoine Coypel was the son of painter, Antoine Coypel, who gave him his early training.
Upon his father’s death in 1722, Coypel became the chief painter of the duc
d’Orleans and lived at the Louvre. Like his father, he became le premier peintre du roi in
1747 and was director of the Academie Royale. The younger Coypel was also a talented writer who
produced tragedies, comedies, prose, and poetry. He also worked as a tapestry designer at the
Gobelins manufactory. He received numerous commission for paintings at the Palais de Versailles
and worked for Madame de Pompadour. Coypel was an excellent tapestry designer. He designed
tapestries for the Gobelins manufactory. His most successful tapestries were created from a
series illustrating Don Quixote. Coypel was the first to illustrate Don Quixote in a
sophisticated manner. These illustrations were painted as cartoons for tapestries, and were
engraved and published in a deluxe folio in Paris in 1724. Coypel created twenty-eight small
paintings for these tapestries over a number of years. Each of the paintings was used as the
centrepiece of a larger area that was richly decorated with birds, small animals, and garlands
of flowers on a pattered background. Over two hundred pieces of the Don Quixote series were
woven between 1714 and 1794. He received a commission to design a series of theatrical scenes
for tapestries for the queen of Poland in 1747. Coypel also wrote prose, several comedies, two
tragedies, and some poetry.
Contemporary French Artists
Art Galleries in France
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