NICOLAS ANTOINE TAUNAY (1755-1830) 19th CENTURY FRENCH SCHOOL On the road to Turin Oil on panel, signed lower left. Gilded frame. (Restorations, cracks in the upper and lower part). 55 x 82 cm - With frame : 69 x 90 cm On the road to Turin, we can see on the left a regiment of grenadier, in the center a chasseur on horseback and on the right an aide-de-camp of general in chief. Biography: Son of the enamel painter Pierre-Henri TAUNAY (1728-81), Nicolas Antoine TAUNAY was a student of Nicolas-Bernard Lépicié. A serious rival of Philibert-Louis Debucourt, Taunay entered the Academy of Fine Arts in 1795. Taunay began studying painting in 1768 with Nicolas-Bernard Lépicié, then with Nicolas Guy Brenet and Francesco Casanova. From 1784 to 1787, he stayed in Rome to study with a grant from the Royal Academy of Painting. In 1805, he was chosen, with other painters, to represent Napoleon's campaigns in Germany. With the fall of the Emperor, Taunay took part in an artistic mission set up by the Count of Barca, a highly respected minister of the regent Don Joao, the future John VI of Portugal. He embarked in 1816 with his family for Brazil as a member of the French artistic mission. He arrived in Rio de Janeiro in 1816 and became a pensioned painter of the kingdom. He joined the group of painters who founded the Royal Academy of Fine Arts and, in 1820, was appointed professor at the Academy and obtained the chair of landscape painting. The following year, in disagreement with the Portuguese painter Henrique José da Silva who had been appointed to the direction of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, he returned to France. His son Félix Taunay became a professor of landscape painting, and later director of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts. Adrien Taunay, his youngest son, accompanied the Freycinet and Langsdorff expeditions as a draughtsman. Exhibition: Napoleon The Eagle Over Europe, Four exhibitions in China, Hubei Provincial Museum, Tianjin NICOLAS-ANTOINE TAUNAY (1755-1830) ON THE ROAD TO TURIN OIL ON PANEL