François Joseph HEIM (1787-1865) Roman emperor or general in front of the victims of a burned city Original canvas, with arched view. 60 x 73 cm. (Curved frame in the upper part). The weeping woman on the left side of our composition is found in a sketch by Heim in the Henner Museum in Paris, with several variations. The son of a drawing teacher and a pupil of Vincent, François-Joseph Heim won the Grand Prix de Rome in 1807. Returning to Paris after the Villa Medici, he began a brilliant career as a history painter, receiving commissions for churches and castles, and painted two ceilings for the Charles X Museum in the Louvre. Favored painter of the Bourbons during the Restoration, he was admitted to the Institute in 1829. A retrospective room was dedicated to him at the Universal Exhibition of 1855, which earned him the admiration of Charles Baudelaire. Son of a drawing teacher and a student of Vincent, François-Joseph Heim won the Grand Prix de Rome in 1807. Back in Paris after the Villa Medici, he began a brilliant career as a history painter, receiving commissions for churches and castles, and creating two ceilings for the Charles X Museum in the Louvre. Favored painter of the Bourbons during the Restoration, he was admitted to the Institute in 1829. A retrospective room was dedicated to him at the Universal Exhibition of 1855, which earned him the admiration of Baudelaire. An official artist, Heim was nonetheless the author of "brilliant, bubbling, animated, nervous canvases, with a surprising vigor of impasto and freedom of brushwork" (Foucart and Brejon de Lavergnée). This ardor, this dynamism can be found in our sketch where the breath of romanticism passes. The white horse on which a Roman general is riding seems to be a link between Rubens and Delacroix.