Protestant painters
of the 17th century

The Saint-Germain-des-Prés corporation had a certain degree of freedom because it was the abbey which granted the franchises. For this reason, it enabled many provincial and foreign painters (often Flemish or from northern Europe), who had come to Paris, to break free from the overbearing supervision of the Parisian corporation, which forced them to adhere to a rigid set of rules. Many protestant painters could be found among the cosmopolitan group of artists who worked for this corporation but who were rarely well off. Still life painting was a typical style of many of the artists in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés corporation.

This painter is well known mainly for the fact that he was Louise Moillon’s father-in-law – he married her mother when she became a widow on 17th August 1620. He was described in the marriage contract as “a bourgeois living in Paris », so we can assume that he was quite a rich man. He lived in the Ile de la Cité and also sold pictures as well as being a painter – in 1627 he bought a booth at the Saint Germain fair in rue Mercière and enlarged it at a later date. When his wife died in 1630, he married Denise du Pont, the widow of Jacques Le Sage, a goldsmith. Incidentally, it is remarkable how many Parisian goldsmiths were Calvinist or at least sympathetic to Calvinism. His first wife, Marie Gilbert, was also the daughter of a goldsmith. He probably died around 1658.

François Garnier and Marie Gilbert had a son, born to them in 1623, called François, like his father. From 1647 to 1652 and also in 1656, he was one of the artists working in the king’s palace ; his work involved both decorating and caring for the upkeep of the building. It is possible that he may have given up the reformed faith after the death of his father when he married Marie Varin in 1658, in the parish of St-Germain-l’Auxerrois. He was in Poitou until 1665, in the employment of the king as a painter, making topographical surveys. He was buried on 18th April 1672 in the parish of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois.

Abraham, a still life painter living in the rue de l’Horloge, might have come from Nancy.

His son, Jean, who painted miniatures, “abjured the heresy of Calvinism, a religion which he had adhered to since his birth and made a solemn profession of faith as a new member of the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman religion” on 1st January 1679.

Was born in Rouen in 1613. He was accepted at the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture on 6th September 1659, and admitted in February of the following year when he submitted a picture depicting “a table covered with a large rug, on which there was placed a collection of musical instruments, antique vases, fruit, flowers and also some animals.” He was well known in his time as a gifted painter of landscapes, flowers and animals. He died on 19th November 1661 and was buried in the Protestant cemetery of Saints-Pères.

Some protestant still life painters took refuge in the Netherlands many years before the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes or the troubled years preceding it. Indeed, their type of painting blended perfectly with the work of contemporary Dutch artists.

N.-L. Peschier, who probably came from the Ardèche, painted “Vanities” in Holland in the 1660’s.

Sébastien Bonnecroy, probably also from the Ardèche, did still life paintings often showing collections of books, and lived in Anvers around 1660. He was in The Hague between 1650 and 1676.