Charles Michel-Ange Challe

Challe, who was born in Paris, became a highly successful designer to King Louis XV of France and was appointed Dessinateur de la Chambre et du Cabinet du Roi in 1765, creating settings for festivals, weddings, funerals and other special events. He began training as an architect but wished to become a history painter and entered the studios of François Lemoyne and François Bouche in the 1730s. Challe won the Prix de Rome in 1741, which took him to the Académie de France in Rome. The distinctive style of the many landscape drawings he made there, between 1742 and 1749, was close to that of Louis Gabriel Blanchet and other artists associated with the French academy. This manner of drawing, in chalk on toned paper, was influential in persuading Richard Wilson to change his own drawing style immediately after his own arrival in Rome late in 1751. On his return to Paris, Challe was elected to the Académie royale but was less successful as a painter than as a draftsman. He ceased to exhibit in the early 1760s after being criticized by Denis Diderot, who much admired his landscape drawings but wrote: “Monsieur Challe, continue to give us your views, but stop painting.”