Louis Lafitte

Louis Lafitte (15 November 1770, Paris - 3 August 1828, Paris) was a French painter, designer, illustrator and muralist.

He was the son of a master barber. In 1778, his father offered refuge to the painter Simon Mathurin Lantara, who was in desperate financial straits and, during his stay, Lantara excited young Lafitte's interest in painting. He also convinced Lafitte's father that his son had a gift for drawing, so he was sent to study with the engraver Gilles Demarteau then, in 1786, with Jean-Baptiste Regnault. Later he was admitted to the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture.

In 1791, he won Prix de Rome for his painting of Regulus returning to Carthage and became the last painter sent to Rome during the reign of Louis XVI. He was living at the Villa Medici in 1793, when protests against French incursions into Italy forced him to flee the Papal States and seek refuge in Florence, where he briefly taught at the Academy.

He returned to Paris in 1796 and was married later that year. Financial problems soon forced him to do decorative work and illustrations, including twelve allegories for the months in the French Republican Calendar. In 1800, he worked at the Château de Malmaison in collaboration with the architect Charles Percier. His work there featured eight Pompeian style dancers for the dining room. In 1809, the Sénat commissioned a monumental oil painting, depicting the establishment of the Cisalpine Republic, but he was unable to complete it successfully.

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