Jacques Réattu

Who was Jacques Réattu?

Jacques Réattu was a French painter and winner of the grand prix de Rome. He was an illegitimate son of the painter Guillaume de Barrême de Châteaufort and Catherine Raspal, sister of the Arles-born painter Antoine Raspal - Antoine gave him his first lessons in painting.

In Paris, in 1773 he was a pupil of Jean-Antoine Julien, then entered the Academy in 1781, with Michel Francois Dandre-Bardon as a patron, he was a pupil of Jean-Baptiste Regnault. In 1790 he won the Prix de Rome, thanks to a work, currently exhibited at the National School of Fine Arts: Daniel faisant arrêter les vieillards accusateurs de la chaste Suzanne. Following anti-French riots of the Roman population, he fled to Naples, from where he could return to France. Réattu bequeathed to his hometown many works including an unfinished Death of Alcibiades, which is a testament to his working method. The town of Arles named the museum established at the site of his residence in his honour.