Dominique Antoine Magaud

French painter

Dominique Antoine Jean Baptiste Magaud (4 August 1817, Marseille 23 December 1899, Marseille) was a French painter, muralist and art school director.

He came from a middle class family and began his career as a customs weigher for the Old Port of Marseilles. In 1839, he decided to start new career and enrolled at the local art academy. After graduating, he completed his studies with Léon Cogniet at the École des Beaux arts in Paris and remained there for a few years. When he returned to Marseille, he became a decorative painter, specializing in cafés. In 1853, his paintings of Amphitrite and Bacchus, on the ceiling at the "Café des Milles Colonnes" (named after a famous establishment in Paris) secured his reputation. In 1858, he painted an allegorical scene of Marseille receiving the world's products at the "Café des Deux Mondes" and, in 1860, Cybele in a chariot pulled by lions, at the Grand Hôtel. All of this work has since disappeared. During his work on these commercial enterprises, the Jesuits commissioned him to decorate the large meeting room at their Religious Association; a building originally occupied by the congregation of Saint Vincent de Paul, dating from 1643. It had recently been enlarged and remodeled under the direction of Marseille's chief architect, Pascal Coste. Magaud worked on this project from 1856 to 1864 and created fifteen murals that portrayed the contributions Catholicism had made to civilization. Among these were a scene of Columbus landing at San Salvador and one of Alessandro Volta contemplating God while in his laboratory. While engaged in this massive project, the Chamber of Commerce enlisted him to take over the work of painting the ceiling in the Bourse. This painting, "L'Apothéose des grands hommes de Provence", was destroyed by a bombing in 1944. Just two years before his retirement, in 1894, he decorated the school's ballroom.