A view of a sunlit courtyard with a trough, seen through an archway

Jean-Victor Bertin was born in Paris to a master wig-maker. Instead of joining his father in the family business, he became a pupil of the innovative landscape painter Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes. Although initially unsuccessful in entering academic competitions, he made his debut in the ‘open’ salon of 1793, and shortly after won the Prix d’Encouragement in 1801. Bertin relied on the principles set forward by Nicolas Poussin to construct idyllic landscapes using compositional devices, such as the landscape seen through an archway, employed for this sunlit courtyard. He continued to perpetuate a classicizing formula for landscape paintings into the nineteenth century, while introducing more direct observations of atmosphere. Bertin’s influence on French landscape painting can be felt in the works of his students Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Achille-Etna Michallon, Camille-Joseph-Etienne Roqueplan and Jules Coignet.