Henri-Pierre Danloux

Henri-Pierre Danloux (24 February 1753 – 3 January 1809) was a French painter and draftsman.

Baron de Besenval in his Study in the Hôtel de Besenval by Henri-Pierre Danloux, 1791. National Gallery, London

Henri-Pierre Danloux, Portrait of a Man, Half-Length, in a Grey Coat, oil on canvas.

He was born in Paris. Brought up by his architect uncle, Danloux was a pupil of Lépicié and later of Vien, whom he followed to Rome in 1775. In 1783, he returned to Lyon and Paris, where he was patroned by the Baronne Mégret de Sérilly d'Etigny, who secured for him a number of important portrait commissions exclusively for the aristocracy. He emigrated to London in 1792 thereby escaping the French Revolution and its potential consequences.

While in England, he was commissioned for portraits of the officer class and the well-to-do. Members of one such family, the Lamberts of Oxfordshire, engaged the master in 1800 and had sittings for its individual members: father, mother and son (Henry John Lambert, Bt.), himself, later in life, serving in the Grenadier Regiment of Foot Guards, a Deputy Lieutenant for Oxfordshire and High Sheriff [Peter Lambert from a letter - Pawsey & Payne, 1973]. Danloux, returned to Paris in 1801, there resuming his career.[1]

Danloux was influenced by fashionable English portrait painters such as Thomas Lawrence (1769–1830), John Hoppner (1758–1810), and George Romney (1734–1802). In 1793, he exhibited at the Royal Academy in London which resulted in commissions from a number of British patrons. Danloux died in Paris in 1809.