Delaunay, Jules-Elie (b Nantes, 13 June 1828; d Paris, 5 Sept 1891)

French painter. He entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris on 7 April 1848, where he was a pupil of Joachim Sotta (1810–77), Hippolyte Flandrin and Louis Lamothe (1822–69). He became a disciple of Flandrin, and, though making his début in the Salon in 1853 with the Saltworkers of Guérande (Nantes, Mus. B.-A.), he soon concentrated on history painting. In 1856 he won the Prix de Rome with the Return of the Young Tobias (Paris, Ecole N. Sup. B.-A.) and left Paris to study at the Académie de France in Rome. His work is imbued with a deep religious sentiment cast in the restrained, controlled style and formal repertoire of Neo-classicism. From early in his career he produced many easel and wall paintings on religious subjects, such as Jesus Healing the Lepers (1850; Le Croisic, Hôp.). In 1854 he received a commission to produce four fresco decorations for the church of the monastery of the Visitation-Ste-Marie in Nantes, which he completed the following year. In 1865 he returned to the monastery to decorate the chapel of St-François de Sales with scenes from that saint’s life. He also contributed to the decoration of at least two Parisian churches, the Trinité (Assumption of the Virgin and Isaiah and Ezekiel ) and St-François-Xavier (Four Prophets).