DECAMPS, ALEXANDRE GABRIEL (1803-1860), French painter, was born in Paris on March 3, 1803, and died at Barbizon on Aug. 2 2, 186o. In his youth he travelled in the East, and reproduced oriental life and scenery with a bold fidelity to nature that made his works the puzzle of conventional critics. He died in consequence of being thrown from a vicious horse while hunting at Fontainebleau. He was probably the first of European painters to represent scenes from Scripture history with their true and natural local background. Of this class were his "Joseph sold by his Brethren," "Moses taken from the Nile," and his scenes from the life of Samson, nine vigorous sketches in charcoal and white. Decamps produced a number of genre pic tures, chiefly of scenes from French and Algerine domestic life. Probably the best known of all his works is "The Monkey Con noisseurs," a clever satire of the jury of the French Academy of Painting, which had rejected several of his earlier works on account of their divergence from any known standard.
See Moreau's Decamps et son oeuvre (1869) .