Garneray and Decamps
After the Restoration of the monarchy in 1814, France was ruled by Kings Louis XVIII (1814-1824) and Charles X (1824-1830) until the Revolution of 1830. The Revolution introduced the period of the July Monarchy under King Louis-Philippe of the House of Orléans (1830-1848). Louis-Philippe was the son of Louis-Philippe-Joseph, the Duc de Orléans who had died by the guillotine in 1795 (four years after having sold the family’s remarkable collection of paintings that were soon dispersed primarily in English collections). Louis-Philippe was devoted to the visual arts long before assuming the crown, having taken personal lessons from Jacques-Louis David. He was a lifelong patron of Horace Vernet (grandson of Joseph-Claude Vernet), the history painter to whom he gave major commissions in the celebrated Gallery of Battles at the Château of at Versailles (whose restoration was one of his major cultural achievements after becoming King Louis-Philippe in the 1830s). Herman Melville visited that Gallery with great pleasure in 1849, the year after King Louis-Philippe was himself deposed.
- Works cited in this section:
- Frank, Stuart M. Melville’s Picture Gallery: Sources and Types of the “Pictorial” Chapters of Moby-Dick. Fairhaven, MA: Edward J. Lefkowicz, 1986.
- Melville, Elizabeth Shaw. “Unpublished Memoranda.” In Merton M. Sealts, Jr. The Early Lives of Melville. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1974. 167-76.
- Moreau, Adolphe. Decamps et son Oeuvre avec Graveurs in Fac-simile. Paris: D. Jouaust, 1869.
- Mosby, Dewey F. “Decamps, Alexandre-Gabriel.” Grove, 8: 598-99.
- Osborne, Frances Cuthbert Thomas. “Recollections (1965).” In Merton M. Sealts, Jr. The Early Lives of Melville. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1974. 179-85.
- Parker, Hershel. Herman Melville: A Biography, vol. 1, 1819-1851. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.
- Whiteley, John. “(Ambroise-) Louis Garneray.” Grove, 14: 153-54.