Paul Delaroche

Born in 1797 into the stylistic war between Romanticism and Davidian Classicism, Delaroche trained under Antoine-Jean Gros and found his lane in the gap: medieval and early modern history rendered with Romantic emotion but Academic finish, no figure idealized. His Execution of Lady Jane Grey in 1833 became the most acclaimed painting of its day, the high mark of a career that treated Napoleon and Christian saints with the same deglorified realism. Then he pivoted to religious subjects in the late 1830s - the austere manner didn't land, critics turned, and he stopped exhibiting altogether after 1837. He spent his last years mentoring Couture, Gérôme, and Millet, and died in 1856 while painting scenes from the Life of the Virgin, only one completed.