Florent Fidèle Constant Bourgeois, also known as "le commandant Bourgeois" or "Bourgeois du Castelet", was born in Guiscard (Picardie, now in Oise) in 1767 and died in Passy in 1841.
He was a well-known French painter, lithographer, draughtsman and engraver. A student of Jacques Louis David, he became a painter of history and especially of landscapes, contemporary or historical. He exhibited his paintings in salons and received commissions from the State. He also published albums of his engravings.
Born in 1767, Florent Fidèle Constant was the son of Pierre Bourgeois, a notary, receiver general of the Marquisate of Guiscard, and steward to the Duke of Aumont, and of Marguerite Agnès Gomart.
During the Revolution, in 1793-1794, he was a volunteer in the 4th battalion of the Haute-Garonne. He was sent to Nîmes and then to Paris. According to the Bénézit, he became a colonel.
He then devoted himself to drawing and painting and became a student of the painter David, who greatly influenced his early works.
Florent Fidèle Constant Bourgeois was particularly fond of painting landscapes, and spent time in Italy, from where he sent many views that he had exhibited at the Salon from 1791 onwards. He was one of the first painters of panoramas and, with Jacques-Michel-Denis Delafontaine, helped Pierre Prévost for the realization of the panorama "Vue de Paris depuis les Tuileries" exhibited from the summer of 17998, and for the "Evacuation of Toulon by the English in 1793", the following year. His brushstrokes were precise and luminous, he treated them directly with a brush, without outlines; his landscapes of Italy, France and Switzerland were particularly appreciated.
Under the Consulate, Vivant Denon commissioned him to draw scenes of Bonaparte's campaigns; Bourgeois thus exhibited, at the Salon of 1800, six panoramic drawings in which he depicted Toulon in 1798 and the departure of the Egyptian expedition. Bourgeois received many official commissions. He painted for the Grand Trianon and for the Château de Fontainebleau. Napoleon asked him to paint a picture of the army in Aschaffenbourg, and museums exhibited his works. Under the Empire and then under the Restoration, he exhibited in the salons for more than thirty years. At the Paris Salon, he exhibited notably "View of the Château of Ussé" in 1810; "View of the Château of Pau" in 1817 etc.
He received several distinctions, a gold medal, several prizes for landscapes and was given a permanent residence in the Louvre Palace. He had students like François-Edmée Ricois. His main works were landscapes, especially historical ones, which he painted or drew in France and abroad. He also made etchings and lithographs. He traveled extensively in France, in Italy, in Switzerland. He also composed works that he illustrated with his lithographs, such as the "Recueil de vues et fabriques pittoresques d'Italie" in 1805 and the following years, "the Recueil de vues pittoresques de la France", the "Voyage pittoresque à la Grande Chartreuse" in 1821. He also illustrated the "Description des nouveaux jardins de la France et de ses anciens châteaux" by Alexandre Laborde. Charles Paul Landon mentioned him as an artist distinguished for the richness of his compositions and the purity of his style, and describes three of his pictures as being in the manner of Gaspard Poussin. Many of his works found place in German and Russian collections (©Wikipedia, translated from French)
This drawing shows all stylistic criteria of works by the well-known French artist Florent Constant Bourgeois du Castelet.