ROUSSEAU, Jean-Siméon

Jean-Siméon Rousseau, called Rousseau de la Rottière, French painter and interior decorator. He was the son of Jules-Antoine Rousseau, and continued the work of his father. In 1783 he decorated the Petits Appartements of Marie-Antoinette at Versailles, and in 1787 a games-room and a boudoir with a ‘cabinet turc’ at Fontainebleau for Marie-Antoinette. These rooms represent the apogée of the French ‘style grotesque’, and some of the motifs employed in them formed a transition to Pompeian decoration.