E. J. (Etienne Jean) Delécluze

Born in Paris in 1781, Étienne-Jean Delécluze was a French painter, writer, and art critic. As a young man he studied with Jacques-Louis David, the leading Neoclassical painter of the age, and that early training shaped his outlook for the rest of his life.

Although he began as an artist, Delécluze became better known for his writing. From the 1820s onward he wrote art criticism for the Journal des débats, where he gained a reputation as a thoughtful and influential commentator on French painting. He generally defended classical ideals and was skeptical of newer Romantic and realist trends, which makes his work especially useful for readers interested in the artistic arguments of the 19th century.

He is also remembered for books that preserved the memory of the world he had known firsthand, including his writing on David and his memoir Souvenirs de soixante années. Because he lived from 1781 to 1863, his life stretched from the aftermath of the French Revolution into the Second Empire, giving his memoirs the value of both personal recollection and cultural history.