Charles Girardet

Karl Girardet (7 May 1813 – 24 April 1871) was a painter and illustrator, born in the then-French and now Swiss village of Le Locle, who lived and worked mostly in Paris. After beginning his career as a landscape painter, he became a renowned history painter as well as a confidant to King Louis-Philippe I and an official court painter. He belonged to the Girardet family of artists.

He was born as Charles Girardet in Le Locle, a part of the French Republic as the eldest son of the lithographer Charles-Samuel Girardet. After 1822, he lived in Paris, where he trained as a painter with Louis Hersent and Léon Cogniet.

On a study trip to Switzerland in 1833–35, he made the acquaintance of the aristocratic painter Maximilien de Meuron, by whose influence he obtained commissions for two panoramas of Lausanne. In 1836, he presented his first exhibits in the Salon of Paris and started working as a copyist for the French royal court.

An alpine landscape presented at the 1837 Salon obtained him a first distinction, and he successfully collaborated with Cogniet on two great battle scenes exhibited at Versailles. He embarked on travels across Europe, filling his sketchbook with landscapes in Düsseldorf (1838), Tyrol and Croatia (1839), and Italy (1840). A painting of a Protestant Assembly at Neuchatêl, Assemblée de Protestants surprise par des troupes catholiques (1839–42), earned him another distinction at the 1842 Salon and regular commissions by the Neuchâtel Friends of Art.

In 1839, Girardet illustrated his first book, Roland furieux, followed by Jardin des plantes by Boitard in 1842. After a six-month stay in Egypt, 1844, he continued illustrating works including Thiers's famous Histoire du Consulat et de l'Empire, and completed several royal commissions for paintings of state occasions.

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