Biography

French painter. Menjaud was a member of the first generation of nineteenth-century French painters who turned to French anecdotal history for subject matter. Like his fellow "troubadour" painters, many of whom studied with Jacques-Louis David, Menjaud received his training from a Neoclassical painter, Jean-Baptiste Regnault.

He first exhibited at the Salon in 1796 and won the Prix de Rome in 1802. The 1808 Salon, to which Menjaud submitted a Henri IV chez Michaud, was a turning point for the artist, and the great majority of the history paintings he subsequently exhibited at the Salons through 1834 were of French history subjects. However, he illustrated also the lives of great painters, such as Raphael Painting the Virgin with Angels (1819) or Tintoretto and Aretino (1822).

He produced numerous paintings of modest format.