Jean-Gabriel Charvet

Who was Jean-Gabriel Charvet?

Jean-Gabriel Charvet, also known as Jean Gabriel Charvet, was a French painter, designer and draftsman who was born in Serrières, Ardèche, France. He studied at the École de Dessin in Lyon under the French artist Donat Nonotte and worked as a designer for the French wallpaper manufacturer Joseph Dufour et Cie of Mâcon, France. In 1773, Charvet travelled to Guadeloupe in the Caribbean on business for his uncle, and stayed for four years producing many studies of native flora and fauna, as well as landscapes. By 1785, he had established a drawing school in Annonay, south of Lyon. Annonay had been a papermaking region since the Sixteenth Century.

Charvet’s reputation rests on twenty-panels of scenic wallpaper titled Sauvages de la Mer Pacifique which combine to form a neoclassical depiction of the explorations of Captain James Cook. The wallpaper was shown in Paris at the Exposition des produits de I’industrie francaise in 1806. Charvet died in Tournon-sur-Rhône, France in 1829.