He was prominent in the court of Napoleon Bonaparte and painted the Emperor and Josephine and many of the significant figures of that time. Among his close friends were the General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, father of the famed author, and the Marquis de Lafayette. Guillaume Lethiere (pr. Ghee-om Let-ee-err) was at the energetic center of the Parisian Renaissance.

Yet, over time, many of the students he taught, including the melancholy landscape artist Theodore Rousseau, became better known than their teacher. Born in Sainte-Anne, Guadeloupe, the son of a wealthy white plantation owner and an enslaved woman of mixed race, Lethiere (1760 – 1832) had a meteoric career.

“He was extremely well regarded,” Olivier Meslay the Clark Art Institute’s director said during a press reception. “(He was) a very strong artist at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th … He was almost lost in art history until now.”

Indeed. In creating this, the first major Lethiere exhibition, the Williamstown staff undertook five years of research and sleuthing to amass more than 100 works by the artist and his influential contemporaries. They cast a wide net, bringing in images from as far away as Japan, from King Charles’ Royal Collection, Versailles, the Louvre and from private owners. Many of the works have never before been publicly exhibited.

The studies, paintings and sculptures are also captured in a companion catalogue, a 400-page hardbound book “Guillaume Lethiere” published by the institute.

“This is truly an historic moment,” Esther Bell, the institute’s deputy director, said during the reception. When the exhibit closes in mid-October it will cross the sea to be unveiled in Paris in mid-November.

The prize in Rome

Before entering the galleries you can gaze upon a larger than life blow-up of a 1798 painting by Boilly that wowed viewers at that year’s Paris Salon. Titled “Meeting of Artists in Isabey’s Studio” it depicts 31 painters, architects and actors representing the new wave of Parisian intelligentsia. The placement of a youthful Lethiere, wearing a brown cape and bearing a slight resemblance to the actor James Spader, symbolically indicates that he is quite close to the center of the city’s intellectual life.

Deemed an illegitimate son, what Lethiere was not close to was his father’s largesse or the family name of Guyonne. The youngest of three children, he received the surname Lethiere, meaning third.

Displaying early artistic promise, at the age of 14 he accompanied his father to France and in Rouen was schooled in draftsmanship. As a teen he was already winning prizes for his works, soon securing an appointment to the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris. He was extremely adept at collecting influential friendships within the expatriate Caribbean community as well as with the politically powerful. By his mid-20s he set sights on a prestigious scholarship to the French Academy in Rome. His first two attempts were dramatic depictions of Biblical and historic stories. His life’s work would remain in these genres.

“To be a history painter was the most important thing you could do,” Bell said. “It meant you understood literature, philosophy and history.”

Lethiere’s third entry, created in 1786, was of a male torso, and it won the judges over. The artist would spend four years in Rome and in later years would serve as the academy’s director.

The kind heart

Upon Lethiere’s return to Paris in 1788, the city was in a political maelstrom. One year later the Revolution erupted and some 13,000 to 15,000 citizens and royalty lost their heads at the guillotine.

Due to the turbulent political climate, lasting a decade, Lethiere was forever separated from many of his friends and compelled to make new alliances.

“It’s a little difficult to put a finger on his politics exactly,” the institute’s curatorial assistant Sophie Kerwin said. “He successfully navigated the tumultuous politics of his time and the various regime changes.”

Out of the ashes of the revolt, Napoleon Bonaparte came to power and he favored Lethiere as an artist. The painter also began a lifetime friendship with the Emperor’s younger brother Lucien. When he served as an ambassador to Spain, the artist accompanied him and while there became influenced by the work of Goya.

At the 1801 Paris Salon the artist exhibited a painting that shocked many viewers and raised critical opprobrium, since it recalled the horrors of the Revolution’s public executions.

“Brutus Condemning His Sons to Death,” defines the ruler’s stoicism as he witnesses the first beheading and pending execution of his two offspring. Their crime was in conspiring to overthrow the recently formed Republic and their father was compelled to execute them.

Kerwin noted, however, that despite the paintings controversy “Brutus was a model of virtuous behavior for the Republicans in France.” The ruler chose loyalty to the state over loyalty to family.

Despite the gruesome scene, the depiction shows, with Lethiere’s keen eye, an expertise in composition with every character dramatically posed. The artist labored over various incarnations of the scene prior to creating a masterwork running 25 feet in length, using enough canvas area to sail a mid-sized boat. Two of his preliminary studies are in the gallery.

The Caribbean native had boundless energy, regularly submitting paintings to the Salon while also overseeing a studio to train artists. In a male-dominated profession he encouraged female artists. Among his students were girls as young as 7 or 8. Many students went on to receive the choice Grand Prix de Rome scholarship, which Lethiere had won decades earlier. Under his tutelage his stepdaughter Eugenie Servieres became a celebrated history painter and her portrait by Lethiere can be found in the galleries.

It was known that the highly sociable artist kept his door open to the expatriate Caribbean citizenry, known as Creoles. It was a sizeable population. (Napoleon’s first wife Josephine also hailed from the Caribbean.) A friend noted that, while visiting Lethiere you could encounter revolutionaries, abolitionists and humanists all at the same time.

The novelist Alexandre Dumas wrote that Lethiere “possessed fine talent, a kind heart and a winning manner.” As the artist approached middle age, a French law underwent a sea change, allowing illegitimate sons and daughters to be legally recognized by their parents. “So by 1799 his trajectory takes a different course,” Bell said. “It’s a moment when he’s on the quick incline. It’s very exciting.”

Lethiere and his siblings inherited his father’s fortune as well as the sugar plantation, and the artist drew from it financially for the rest of his life. Despite the artist’s abolitionist beliefs, the acreage continued to be maintained by enslaved people.

Hidden in plain sight

In the galleries you’ll find what’s considered by many to be one of Lethiere’s most remarkable images. “Oath of the Ancestors” created in 1822 depicts a unity between Alexander Petion and Jean-Jacques Dessalines, two Haitian revolutionaries intent upon winning freedom for their country, then under French colonial rule.

The painting itself, however, remains on the island. Given the political volatility of the country, exporting the work would have been problematic. You are instead able to view a huge, illuminated, full color version of the artwork.

The creation showed where Lethiere’s sympathies lay.

“This was a very risky undertaking,” Bell said. “To paint such a politically charged image when slavery had been reinstated in France.”

The Clark is unique in producing this solo exhibit venerating an artist who, in later generations fell out of vogue when historic and Biblical works became passé.

“Lethiere is a good example of being in obscurity when you are still in plain sight,” Meslay said.

Some 7.5 million people visit the Louvre each year and most make a direct beeline to the “Mona Lisa.” The director explained that Lethiere’s paintings of “Brutus…” and “Death of Virginia” are just 25 feet away from Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous work.

“They have been standing next to the Mona Lisa since 1832 and never went into storage, but nobody is looking at them,” he said.

Later this year, when the exhibit will be unveiled at the Louvre, new generations will experience Lethiere in a far different light for the first time.

“Guillaume Lethiere” continues at the Clark through Oct. 14. New exhibits “Treasures from the Corning Museum of Glass” and works by Edgar Degas are also on display. Open daily July and August 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. September onward it’s open Tuesday through Sunday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is $20; ages 21 and under are free.