Biography

French painter and draughtsman. He was a pupil at Fontainebleau of Ruggiero de Ruggieri (d. after 1597) and was also trained by Martin Fréminet's father, a rather mediocre painter in Paris. Dubreuil became Premier Peintre to Henry IV and is usually identified as a member of the so-called second Fontainebleau school, together with Ambroise Dubois and Martin Fréminet. These artists were employed by the king to decorate the royal palaces, their functions being similar to those of Rosso Fiorentino and Primaticcio earlier at Fontainebleau under Francis I. Dubreuil's death meant that many of the projects in which he was involved had to be completed by assistants. Despite this and the fact that the majority of his finished work has since been lost, he is considered an important link between the Mannerism of Primaticcio and the classicism of Nicolas Poussin and his contemporaries in the following century.