Étienne Advinent

Étienne Advinent, the son of button manufacturer Louis Advinent and his wife Benoîte Binant, was born on 11 February 1757 in Lyon. He was the older brother of Étienne-Louis, born in 1767, whose name and date of birth he would later adopt. Étienne was the godfather of his younger brother, Louis-Étienne (1774–1843), who was 17 years his junior and had almost the same name. Étienne spent his childhood in Lyon and may have been a pupil of Benoît Maxime, an drawing teacher in Lyon. As a young man, he travelled to Grenoble via Montpellier (1782), Lille (1784) and Lausanne (1787). In newspaper advertisements published between 1784 and 1789, he described himself as a professor at the Académie in Montpellier and a former student of the Académie Royale in Paris, although there is no evidence to support this. During this period, he earned a living as a miniaturist, as well as a painter, art dealer, restorer and drawing instructor. In the early 1790s, he collaborated with the engraver Jacques Gamelin, who painted his portrait in 1791. In 1806, he was staying in Toulouse, where he exhibited some of his works at the museum, including a self-portrait. From 1811 to 1812, the artist was in Draguignan, working on a painting for a local church. By 1817 at the latest, he was living in Marseille, where he exhibited some of his works at the Salon in 1818. He showed additional works in 1818 and 1819 at exhibitions in Aix-en-Provence and Paris. Around 1828, he was active in Nîmes, where he again participated in the local art exhibition.

Advinent was married three times and had several children. In 1778, he married Catherine Chana, with whom he had a son, Louis Charles, who was born as early as 1776 and later became a painter himself. As Advinent was only 19 at the time, the child was brought up by his presumed teacher, Benoît Maxime. Around 1780, Advinent separated from his wife, but the marriage was not officially dissolved until 1797, at her instigation (Catherine Chana later married Benoît Maxime, who had previously been married to her sister). In 1788 and 1792, the artist fathered two daughters from a relationship with Marguerite Chambrau. In 1801, he became engaged to Jeanne Giral, but as she died shortly afterwards, the marriage did not take place. From this relationship, he had another daughter, born that same year. In 1802, he married his second wife, Elisabeth Verzier (1769–1812), the daughter of a silk manufacturer from Lyon, in Montpellier. The following year, his son Abraham Ulysse was born to another of his mistresses, Marie-Jeanne Julie (c. 1780–1862). Advinent married Julie in Marseille in 1817, when their son was already thirteen and a half years old. Contrary to earlier assumptions, Advinent was never married to Julie Gamelin, daughter of the painter and engraver Jacques Gamelin. The artist died in Marseille on 28 December 1831.

In 1817, Advinent adopted the first name of his younger brother, Étienne-Louis, and also falsified his year of birth: 1757 became 1767. The reason for this change of identity remains unclear. In their extensive article on Advinent, Dominique Dumas and Nathalie Lemoine-Bouchard (Lettre de la miniature, no. 90, 2026) attributed the name change to the newly installed Bonald law, under which divorces—even those granted earlier—were deemed invalid. Henry-Noel Canival, on the other hand, emphasises that this law only applied to new divorces and those currently being negotiated, and that Advinent’s divorce from Catherine Chana in 1797 remained valid. According to him, the artist could have married Marie-Jeanne Julie in 1817 without changing his identity, but perhaps he did so in order to escape his creditors or avoid legal proceedings.

As well as portraits, Advinent also painted landscapes and genre scenes, in oil and miniature. His supposed self-portrait, painted in 1804, is now in the Fondation Custodia, Paris.

We extend our sincere thanks to Henry-Noel Canival, Paris, for his extensive research on the artist.