Louis-Etienne Advinent

Louis-Etienne Advinent, the son of a button manufacturer from Lyon, was probably self-taught. He spent his childhood in Lyon and, as a young man, travelled via Montpellier (1782), Lille (1784) and Lausanne (1787) to Grenoble (1788). He described himself as a student at the Royal Academy in Paris in newspaper advertisements published between 1784 and 1789. However, this cannot be verified in the Academy's records. Before 1818, he moved to Marseille, from where he sent some of his works to the Salons in Aix-en-Provence and Paris (1818/19). Around 1828, he was active in Nîmes, where he exhibited various works. The artist died in Marseille on 28 December 1831. Advinent’s first marriage was to Julie Gamelin, the daughter of the painter and engraver Jacques Gamelin. Following his wife’s death, he married Marie-Jeanne Julie in 1817, with whom he had a son, Abraham. However, the boy had already been born in 1803, in Montpellier. In addition to portraits, Advinent also painted landscapes and genre scenes, in oil and miniature. His self-portrait, painted in 1804, is kept in the Fondation Custodia, Paris.