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mheu, Historical Museum of the Urban Environment

Battle in Rue de Rohan, July 29, 1830

Hippolyte Lecomte

Battle in Rue de Rohan, July 29, 1830 - Hippolyte Lecomte

1831
43cm × 60cm
oil on canvas
Paris, Musée Carnavalet
© RMN / Agence Bulloz

View this work in the exhibition The Street

The artist

Not much can be said about Hippolyte Lecomte (1781-1857). He was a respectable painter of historical scenes, particularly those from the First Empire and the Napoleonic Wars. He married Camille Vernet, the sister of the painter Horace Vernet, with whom he had a son, Charles Emile Lecomte-Vernet, who also became a painter (Orientalist). Along with Auguste Garneray, he designed costumes for the Opera ballets.

Battle in Rue de Rohan shows a scene from 1830, on the final day of the July Revolution, which saw the monarchy overthrown. The painting is not, however, Lecomte's most outstanding work, with its somewhat static crowd scene and horizontal composition. Eugène Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People is a more impressive piece on the same theme.