Jean-Jacques Champin (1796–1860) - View from Montmartre, Paris

Jean-Jacques CHAMPIN
(Sceaux, 1796 – Paris, 1860)

View of the Basilica of Saint-Denis from the Montmartre Cemetery

Oil on paper mounted on canvas
Signed lower right
15 x 27 cm
Around 1819

Son of a mayor of Sceaux, Jean Jacques Champin was born in the same town on September 7, 1796. After a few years spent in Burgundy with his wife, the couple ended up settling in Paris in 1815. Champin quickly devoted himself to the recent technique of lithography with his first work the Church of Sceaux and the entrance to the park of Trévise dated 1816.
A student of Félix Marie Ferdinand Storelli and Jacques Auguste Régnier, Champin devoted himself mainly to landscapes. Renowned for his series of lithographs of views of old Paris, he later founded an engraving workshop on rue des Pyramides in Paris. From then on, he began by exploring all the surrounding areas of the Paris of the time: Sceaux of course, Arcueil, Massy, ??Meudon, Clamart… Then thanks to the development of the railway, he took the opportunity to travel throughout France and then Europe with Switzerland and Italy.
Champin will also take, through his art, an active part in the launch of travel guides by participating in the illustration of these works. This will make him a valuable witness to life in the first part of the 9th century.
Champin exhibited at the Paris Salon from 1819 to 1859, mainly watercolors, lithographs and some oils.
The artist died in Paris on February 25, 1860.

Museums: Paris (Mus. du Louvre, mus. Carnavalet), Angers, Senlis, Nevers, Maison de Balzac, Maison de Victor Hugo, Sceaux, Maison de Chateaubriand, New York (MET. Mus. of Art), Amsterdam (Rijksmus.), Geneva…

Our oil on paper is a view taken from the Montmartre cemetery overlooking what was then called the white barrier located below and which was a stone quarry used for the construction of Parisian buildings. Another important detail, we can see in the distance the basilica of Saint Denis with, a rare thing, its spire still standing. Indeed, the latter, destabilized by the tornadoes of 1842, 1843 and 1845, had to be carefully dismantled in the spring of 1846 to allow the consolidation of the building with a view to being reassembled later. This was not the case...
Our study could be dated to around 1819, the time at which Champin is attested to be present on the premises. Indeed, he exhibited a watercolor at the Salon of 1819 entitled The Telegraph of Montmartre.