page_title: Charles-Caïus Renoux
section_title: Early success and patronage of du Sommerard
hierarchical_section_title: Charles-Caïus Renoux / Early success and patronage of du Sommerard
caption_attribution_description: English: Charles-Caïus Renoux, Intérieur de l'église Saint-Etienne-du Mont à Paris (c. 1820, Musée Crozatier)
context_page_description: Charles-Caius Renoux was a French painter, lithographer, and illustrator. He first achieved success with paintings of medieval churches, particularly the ruins of cloisters and monasteries destroyed during the French Revolution, works for which he is still best known. Renoux also painted landscapes, large-scale battle scenes, and historical subjects, works which uniquely prepared him for the final phase of his career, the creation of spectacular dioramas, the “moving pictures” of the era. He also taught at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris; his notable students included Narcisse Berchère and Hector Hanoteau.
context_section_description: The contemporary scholar Alfred Maury gave this romantic but sparsely detailed account of Renoux’s early life and beginnings as an artist:
  M. Renoux was barely reaching his fifteenth year when he lost his master [teacher], the only one he had ever had; painting had for this very young man a powerful, indefinable attraction, which the violent opposition of his family could not erase. Desperate to overcome the antipathies of his parents, Renoux leaves the paternal roof; he travels through towns, visits monuments rich in masterpieces; from that moment on, his resolution was unshakable, and the day he took the palette to reproduce the interior of the church of Louviers and the casemates of Château Gaillard, that day, Renoux was able to exclaim with Correggio: "Anch io son pittore! And I too am a painter!"
  M. Renoux atteignait à peinesa quinziéme année lorsqu'il perdit son maître, le seul qu'il ait jamais eu ; la peinture avait pour ce tout jeune homme un attrait puissant, indéfinissable, que ne put effacer l'opposition violente de sa famille. Désespérant de vaincre les antipathies de ses parents, Renoux quitte le toit paternel; il parcourt les villes, visite les monuments riches en chefs-d'œuvre; dès ce moment, sa résolution est inébranlable, et le jour où il prit la palette pour reproduire l'intérieur de l'église de Louviers et les casemates du Château Gaillard, ce jour là, Renoux put s'écrier avec le Corrège: "anch io son pittore! Et moi aussi je suis peintre!" 
  Maury does not name Renoux’s "only" master (teacher). Catalogues of the Paris Salons typically name a painter’s instructor, but never do so with Renoux. A newspaper of 1825 called him "élève et émule de MM. Bouton et Daguerre," the student and emulator of Charles Marie Bouton and Louis Daguerre. Whether or not Renoux took formal instruction from them, these two older artists played an important role in his career.
  Whatever his training, by 1822, the year Renoux turned 27, his talents as a painter had attracted the patronage of the antiquarian Alexandre du Sommerard, whose collection of medieval art and artifacts would become the Musée de Cluny. Du Sommerard included lithographs of four works by Renoux in his highly influential Vues de Provins. The book, an illustrated tour of medieval churches and abbeys, many of them reduced to ruins in the violence of the French Revolution, was part of an artistic and literary movement, the troubadour style, that romanticized the Middle Ages in France.
  That same year, Renoux debuted at the Paris Salon of 1822 with four paintings that garnered him a Medal of the Second Class. These included the two paintings cited by Maury, Vue prise dans l'église de Louviers and Ruines des casemates du château Gaillard, the latter described in the catalogue: "As a result of the persecutions he was experiencing, Nicolas Poussin, forced to leave his country, comes to take a last look at his birthplace." ("Par suite des persécutions qu'il éprouvait Nicolas Poussin, obligé de quitter sa patrie, vient jeter un dernier regard sur les lieux qui l’ont vu naître.") 
  Two years later, at the Paris Salon of 1824, Renoux exhibited nine painting, all of which were purchased before the exhibit closed. L'interieur de l’Église Saint-Etienne-du-Mont à Paris was acquired by the state and installed at the Luxembourg Palace. (It is now in the collection of the Musée Crozatier in Le Puy-en-Velay.) Seven painting were bought by du Sommerard. One of these was La Confession; figures italiennes, depicting one of the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church. By 1827, Renoux had produced paintings depicting each of the seven sacraments; du Sommerard purchased the entire series.
  In 1825, Renoux painted a portrait of du Sommerard seated in a room full of prized artifacts, L’Antiquaire (The Antiquarian). The painting is frequently cited by scholars researching the history of antiquarianism and the invention of the modern museum.
caption: Intérieur de l'église Saint-Etienne-du Mont à Paris (c. 1820, Musée Crozatier)
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