Auguste de Forbin

Louis Nicolas Philippe Auguste, comte de Forbin (La Roque-d'Anthéron, Bouches-du-Rhône, 19 August 1779 – Paris, 23 February 1841) was the French painter and antiquary who succeeded Vivant Denon as curator of the Musée du Louvre and the other museums of France.

Born at his family's château, La Roque-d'Anthéron, and a Chevallier of the Order of Malta from birth, he drew before he learned to write. In his earliest training he formed a friendship with François Marius Granet that lasted through life. In the counter-revolutionary insurrection at Lyon in 1793, where he was getting instruction from Jean-Jacques de Boissieu, he lost his father, the marquis de Pont-à-Mousson, and his uncle, and was saved only by his youth. The marquise withdrew with her children quietly to Vienne and then to Provence, weathering the extreme phases of the Revolution, while Forbin and Granet developed their art by drawing in the countryside. With the Directoire, it was secure for him to go to Paris, where his good looks and easy, elegant manner recommended him as well as his art. He called Granet to join him, and both entered the large studio of Jacques-Louis David, virtually a neoclassical academy, where they matured their taste. Forbin's first submissions to the Paris salon were in 1796, 1799 and 1800.

He was conscripted into the army, married an heiress, Mlle de Dortan, then gained leave from his regiment in 1802 to travel to Rome with Granet, where he fell into the facile manner of a highly accomplished dilettante, as he was received by the best of Francophile Roman society; in 1804 he was given the post of chamberlain to Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte's sister Princess Pauline Borghese. They were lovers from 1805 to 1807, living together at the Place Forbin, Cours Mirabeau, Aix-en-Provence, from May to October 1807.

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