Julien Le Blant (born in Paris, March 30, 1851, died in Paris, February 28, 1936) was a French painter of military subjects who specialized in the scenes of the Vendée Wars of 1793–1799 that occurred during the French Revolution. Because he came from a family from the Bas-Poitou, part of the old province of Poitou, Le Blant was descended from the French "Blancs" who had opposed the French Revolution and was thus in sympathy with those who rose up and formed the Grand Catholic Army of the Vendée. He spent his artistic career commemorating the events of the rebellion in large works that were exhibited in the annual Paris Salon. Le Blant was a much honored painter and he won a Bronze Medal at the Salon in 1878, a Silver Medal in 1880 and a Gold Medal at the 1889 Exposition Universelle, the Paris World's Fair that commemorated the centennial of the beginning of the French Revolution. Le Blant was also a prolific illustrator, contributing more than five hundred illustrations to dozens of books. Le Blant's last major accomplishment was a large series of drawings, watercolors and paintings of French soldiers on their way home from and departing to the front during the First World War. His work is in a number of public collections, but primarily in France because the subjects he specialized in did not command great popularity abroad.
Le Blant was born in 1851, the first son of Edmond-Frederic Le Blant (1818–1897) and Marie Louise Gasparine Lemaire Le Blant. His father was trained as an attorney, but he became a famous biblical archaeologist. His mother died soon after giving birth to her son and Juilen was raised by a stepmother. According to family accounts, Julien was a difficult child. He was educated at the lycée Bonaparte and by the Dominicans at d'Arcueil. He studied in the atelier of Ernst-Joseph-Angleton Girard (1813–1898), who was in turn a student or "élève" of d'Isabey. Le Blant made his debut at the Paris Salon in 1874 with "Assassinat de Lepellier Saint Fargeau". From the beginning of his career he focused on military subjects and on scenes of the French Revolution. This was in great contrast to the works of other military painters of the time who usually portrayed the glories of the subsequent Napoleonic Wars. French painters of the time we obsessed with realism and so Le Blant collected uniforms, muskets and peasant's clothing to have his models that posed for him wear. His work was popular and he was sought after both as a painter and an illustrator. While his large works were in oil, he also developed a reputation for his watercolors. In addition to his scenes of military campaigns and armies, he also painted maritime subjects, but warships rather than scenes of commerce.
From the beginning of his career, Le Blant was focused on memorializing the revolt that occurred against the French Revolution in the Vendée. This campaign against Revolutionary authority began in 1793 and ended in 1796 with the capture and execution of the last of its major leaders. Le Blant portrayed the leaders and occurrences of "La Vendée in virtually all of his major works. The Vendée revolt is one of the most controversial subjects in French history. A series of new edicts from the Revolutionary government in Paris is credited with setting off the revolt. These included an increase in taxation, conscription and a number of anti-clerical measures that the deeply religious people of the region resisted. The Revolutionary troops were spread thin in the region, and as the revolt widened the hastily formed Catholic Army of the Vendee managed to capture a number of towns and win a series of pitched battles. Eventually, through superior numbers and equipment, the forces of the Revolution defeated the rebels, and the campaign to put down the revolt became notoriously savage. While there were atrocities on both sides, the government in Paris wanted the rebellion to be put down savagely in order to discourage further revolts against its authority, and it was. The most modern academic estimates are that about a quarter of the population – men, women and children – were killed by the troops of the Revolutionary and their sympathizers.
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