Jacques Maroger

Born in Paris, Maroger was a realist painter, former technical director of the Louvre Museum’s conservation laboratory, author and teacher. Maroger began his studies with French portrait painter Jacques-Emile Blanche. In 1907, he continued his studies with Louis Anquetin, a former pupil of Vincent van Gogh. While studying with Anquetin, Maroger developed an interest in the field of restoration, leading eventually to his appointments as technical director of the laboratory at the Louvre Museum and president of the Restorers of France.

Maroger gained prominence when in 1929 he made significant discoveries about the painting formulas used by the old master painters of Europe, first published by the British Academy of Science in 1931. In 1948, Maroger’s findings were published as the book The Secret Formulas and Techniques of the Old Masters.

Maroger received the Légion d’honneur from the French government for his technical help on a Raoul Dufy mural for the Paris World Fair in 1937. Two years later, at the encouragement of Alice Garrett, a patron of the arts in Baltimore, he immigrated to the United States. He first lectured at the Parsons School of Design in New York. Garrett introduced Maroger to Hans Schuler, president of the Maryland Institute (now Maryland Institute College of Art) in Baltimore, and in 1942 he joined its faculty. Maroger emphasized traditional training for artists including anatomy study, drawing, and grinding one’s own pigments.

Through a provision in Alice Garrett’s will, Maroger resided in the painting studio on Johns Hopkins University’s Evergreen estate, which John Work Garrett had bequeathed to the university in 1942, and was the Garrett family home until Alice Garrett’s death in 1952. The legacy of Maroger’s style of painting was extended through the teachings of Ann Didusch Schuler and her husband Hans Schuler, Jr. with the establishment of their Schuler School of Fine Arts in 1959.