Born in Guadeloupe to a freed slave mother of African descent and a royal officer father, he was educated in Rouen and then Paris under the Ancien Régime, and enjoyed a brilliant official career; director of the Académie de France in Rome (1807-1816), elected member of the Institut in 1818, he was professor at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts from 1819. He was also a major collector and advisor to Lucien Bonaparte.

His output illustrates the career of an artist confronted with the upheavals of his era and the succession of regimes from the Revolution to the July Monarchy.

Most of his paintings and drawings are based on ancient history. He began his career in the triumph of Davidian neo-classicism, and his perseverance in this direction led to his discredit at the end of the 1820s, when the younger generation of Romantic artists gradually took over. Ancient heroism inspired him to paint two immense canvases, nearly eight meters long and now in the Louvre, Brutus Condemning His Sons to Death, completed in Rome in 1811, and The Death of Virginia (1828).

Lethière's most famous painting, Le Serment des ancêtres (Port-au-Prince, musée du Panthéon national haïtien), a manifesto against slavery and for the freedom of peoples, is featured prominently in the exhibition. Most of the works will be presented in Paris for the first time since the 19th century, and the new research carried out for both the exhibition and the catalog will make it possible to better understand the artist's work.

This exhibition is supported by the Cercle international du Louvre - American Friends of the Louvre and the Ford Foundation.