Julien Le Blant (born in Paris, March 30, 1851, died in Paris, February 28, 1936) was a French painter of military subjects who specialized in the scenes of the Vendée Wars of 1793–1799 that occurred during the French Revolution. Because he came from a family from the Bas-Poitou, part of the old province of Poitou, Le Blant was descended from the French "Blancs" who had opposed the French Revolution and was thus in sympathy with those who rose up and formed the Grand Catholic Army of the Vendée. He spent his artistic career commemorating the events of the rebellion in large works that were exhibited in the annual Paris Salon. Le Blant was a much honored painter and he won a Bronze Medal at the Salon in 1878, a Silver Medal in 1880 and a Gold Medal at the 1889 Exposition Universelle, the Paris World's Fair that commemorated the centennial of the beginning of the French Revolution. Le Blant was also a prolific illustrator, contributing more than five hundred illustrations to dozens of books. Le Blant's last major accomplishment was a large series of drawings, watercolors and paintings of French soldiers on their way home from and departing to the front during the First World War. His work is in a number of public collections, but primarily in France because the subjects he specialized in did not command great popularity abroad. Biography Childhood and training Le Blant was born in 1851, the first son of Edmond-Frederic Le Blant (1818–1897) and Marie Louise Gasparine Lemaire Le Blant. His father was trained as an attorney, but he became a famous biblical archaeologist. His mother died soon after giving birth to her son and Juilen was raised by a stepmother. According to family accounts, Julien was a difficult child. He was educated at the lycée Bonaparte and by the Dominicans at d'Arcueil. He studied in the atelier of Ernst-Joseph-Angleton Girard (1813–1898), who was in turn a student or "élève" of d'Isabey. Le Blant made his debut at the Paris Salon in 1874 with "Assassinat de Lepellier Saint Fargeau". From the beginning of his career he focused on military subjects and on scenes of the French Revolution. This was in great contrast to the works of other military painters of the time who usually portrayed the glories of the subsequent Napoleonic Wars. French painters of the time we obsessed with realism and so Le