Noël Hallé

Noël Hallé studied with his father, Claude-Guy Hallé, also the son of a painter, and with his brother-in-law Jean Restout. From 1737 to 1744, he lived and worked in Rome, where he copied Raphel’s Expulsion of Heliodorus in the Vatican and sketched after works by the Carracci family, Domenichino, and Tiepolo. In 1748, Hallé was received into the French Academy with the painting The Dispute of Minerva and Neptune, now in the Louvre. Highly esteemed by his colleagues, he enjoyed a successful career within the Academy. His works show a combination of the graceful rococo style, characterized by the ornate, delicate forms, and interest in pleasure, and the new seriousness of tone that marked the middle of the 18th century when Neoclassicism was in its initial stages.