François Marius Granet (177-1849) was born in Aix-en-Provenance and trained as an artist under Jean-Antoine Constantin and later, briefly with Jacques Louis David in Paris. He found early success with the submission of a painting depicting a church cloister in the Salon of 1799. In 1802, he travelled to Rome and remained there for the most of the next 22 years. He set up his studio in an abandoned monastery, working extensively in the city and the surrounding countryside. He was able to make a reasonable living selling views of Rome to the many French tourists who visited the city during the Napoleonic occupation. At the Salon of 1819 he exhibited a painting of The Choir of the Capuchin Church in Rome, widely praised by critics, which firmly established his reputation in France.

Returning to France in 1824, Granet was appointed to a position as a curator at the Louvre in 1826, and was later given the task of establishing a Museum of French History at Versailles by Louis-Philippe. Now back in Paris, Granet was interested in elevating Genre painting to the level of History painting. He began a series of watercolors and paintings about the life of Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) whom he admired and whose paintings he often copied and emulated. At the time, there was a movement of artists who held Poussin to a very high standard, and several artists exhibited paintings of the same subject at the Salons, among those were Granet’s friend and colleague Pierre-Nolasque Bergeret (1782-1863) in 1819 and Charles Paul Landon (1760-1826) in 1804.

After Granet’s death, some two hundred of his drawings and watercolors were presented to the Louvre. The remainder of his studio, numbering around three hundred paintings and some 1,500 drawings, were left to his native city of Aix; a bequest that forms the nucleus of the Musée Granet.