The Dead Christ by Antoine Dieu (1662-1727), a wonderful discovery for French painting, was presented at the “No Colour, Nothing but Nuance!” exhibit at the Musée des Augustins, where it caused quite a stir and was acquired the same year.

Though Antoine Dieu’s drawings are carefully studied today, his work as a painter is much less known and is limited to just a few works. He was a good friend of Watteau, and this rather unusual gentleman was also a painting merchant.

The acquisition of this beautiful painting brought one of the great French neoclassical painters to the collections. It is a repainting by the artist himself of the famous 1783 painting that is kept at the Louvre, , which earned Regnault (1754-1829) his reputation in the historic painting genre. Regnault’s work is characterized by the siren echoes of foreign lands that other history painters of his generation also heeded.

Though the Musée des Augustins has a superb sculpture collection, it has few key sculpted works representing the turning point of the 1800s, though this is well-represented in painting. This gap is filled by this exceptional portrait by the sculptor Roland (1746-1816) of Chaptal, a man from southern France who is particularly linked with the expansion of collections at provincial museums. Thus this great man with a benevolent smile finds his own place in our museum.