Louis Joseph Le Lorrain

1715 Paris – 1759 St. Petersburg

Louis Joseph Le Lorrain, a painter of architecture and histo­rical scenes, studied under Jacques Dumont, called le Romain, at the Paris Academy, which awarded him its prestigious Grand Prix in 1739, when he was still only a young man, and made him a full member in 1756. A regular participant in the Paris Salon exhibitions of the 1750s, Lorrain earned a reputation for his religious and allegorical compositions and architectural paintings. His renown was not limited to France, however. In 1758, Tsarina Elisabeth of Russia invited him to St. Petersburg, where he was appointed rector of the newly founded Academy of Arts.