Adrien Manglard

Adrien Manglard was born in Lyon, France, in March 1695 (sources give the day as the 10th, 12th, or 13th), the son of the painter Edmond Manglard. He received early training from his godfather, the Dutch landscapist Adriaen van der Cabel, who was active in Lyon until his death in 1705. After his family moved to Avignon around 1710, Manglard reportedly studied under a painter known as Frere Imbert (Brother Imbert).

He arrived in Rome in 1715, at about twenty years old, where he built his career as a marine and port painter. His views and storm scenes quickly found favor with major patrons, including Victor Amadeus II, King of Sardinia, and Philip, Duke of Parma, and he executed decorative commissions for Roman palaces belonging to the Rospigliosi, Colonna, and Pamphilj families.

His professional standing was formalized on both sides of the Alps: he was admitted to Rome's Accademia di San Luca in 1735, and to the Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris, first agree in March 1734 and then received as a full academician in the category of peintre de marines in November 1736. According to one dealer account, two of his marine paintings were subsequently brought to Paris and shown at the Salon of 1739. He is widely credited as a formative influence on, and reported teacher of, the younger marine painter Joseph Vernet. Manglard died in Rome on 1 August 1760.

Contemporary reaction to Manglard survives mainly in institutional and press notices rather than developed criticism. When the Academie Royale in Paris reviewed two of his submitted marine paintings, the admission minutes recorded that the company, having seen the two marines he had sent, approved him unanimously. At his death in 1760, the Roman newssheet Diario ordinario described him as a celebrated painter of marine and figure subjects and a member of Rome's fine arts academy. Modern scholarship, notably Olivier Michel's 1981 study in Melanges de l'Ecole francaise de Rome, situates him as the leading marine painter active in Rome in the first half of the eighteenth century and credits him as a formative influence on Joseph Vernet.

Manglard is a historical Old Master rather than an artist with an active gallery program; his paintings, drawings, and prints circulate through Old Master auction houses, print dealers, and museum holdings rather than primary-market representation. General market surveys place his oil paintings between roughly EUR 6,000 and more than EUR 60,000, and his drawings between roughly EUR 400 and EUR 2,000, though no single sale could be confirmed as his all-time auction record from the sources available. Works are sometimes offered with a qualified attribution, such as "attr. a," which affects price and should be checked against provenance.

There is no published catalogue raisonne for Manglard, so attribution depends on academy and archival records, period press notices, and case-by-case connoisseurship rather than a single reference catalogue. His auction market is thin and largely undocumented at the top end, works are held predominantly by museums, including the Louvre and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and pieces offered at auction sometimes carry qualified attributions. Collectors should treat any published price range as a general market indicator rather than a verified record and should confirm provenance and attribution directly with specialist Old Master departments.