1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Rousseau de la Rottière, Jean Siméon

ROUSSEAU DE LA ROTTIERE, JEAN SIMEON (b. 1747), French decorative painter, was the youngest son of Jules Antoine Rousseau, “ sculpteur du Roi.” The territorial addition to his patronymic has never been explained, but it is known to have been in use when he was little more than a boy. He studied at the Académie Royale, where we find him in September 1768 winning the medal given to the best painter of the quarter. He appears with his brother Jules Hugues to have been employed from an early date by his father for the decorative work executed by the family at Versailles. There has been some controversy among the authorities as to the respective shares of father and son in these works, but many of the attributions are fairly determined by dates, Jules Antoine Rousseau having been at work at Versailles for years before the birth of his famous son. The “ Bains du Roi,” the “ Salon de la Méridienne,” part of the bedchamber of Madame Adelaide, and the “ Garde-robe of Louis XVI.” were among the achievements which there can be little doubt were shared in by Rousseau de la Rottiére. His most individual and most famous undertaking was, however, the decoration of the lovely “ Boudoir de Madame de Sévilly,” now at the Victoria and Albert Museum. This little room, 14 ft. long, 101/2 ft. wide and 16 ft. high, was removed from the house in the Rue de Saint Louis, in the Marais. The Seigneur de Sévilly, who was hereditary “ Trésorier général de l'Extraordinaire des guerres ” under Louis XVI., married his cousin Anne Marie Louise de Pange, a favourite maid-of-honour of Marie Antoinette, and the story runs that his wife and the queen, desiring to give him a surprise, had the room decorated during his absence from Paris. It was purchased for the museum for 60,000 francs in 1869. The wall paintings of this sumptuous room came from the hand of Rousseau de la Rottière; the overdoor and part of the ceiling were executed by Lagrenée le jeune; the architect was Ledoux; the grey marble figures of aged men on either side of the fireplace were sculptured by Clodion; the mounts of the chimney piece are apparently from the chisel of Gouthiére. The date of the room is assigned to 1781–82, and Jean Siméon's authorship of much of its decoration is rendered certain by his own still existing sketch. The decoration is Pompeian in feeling, and in the main its taste is admirable; the execution is of the highest excellence. The tall narrow panels are painted in medallions with amorini; festoons and bouquets of flowers fill every available space; the shutters are painted with doves and shepherdesses. Lagrenée's pictures in the upper lunettes represent the elements; upon the ceiling is Jupiter enthroned within a deep blue border. The perfection of detail, the unity of the whole composition, the dexterity with which so small a chamber, lofty out of proportion to its length and width, has been picked out with recessed arches, the tenderness of its scheme of colour, combine to produce an exquisite effect. It is a melancholy reflection that M. de Sévilly, whom his wife and Marie Antoinette combined to surprise with this chef d'œuvre, was guillotined, and that his wife, whose sitting-room it was, was condemned to die with him and with Madame Élisabeth de France, whom they had befriended, but was saved, against her will, by the princess, who made a false declaration as to her condition. She had two subsequent husbands, and lost them both in little more than two years. She herself lived less than five years after her delivery by the fall of Robespierre. There is no information as to Rousseau’s later life. The last known mention of him is in 1792.