Nicolas-Guy Brenet was a French history painter

History painting

History painting is a genre in painting defined by subject matter rather than an artistic style, depicting a moment in a narrative story, rather than a static subject such as a portrait...

 who studied in the atelier of François Boucher

François Boucher

François Boucher was a French painter, a proponent of Rococo taste, known for his idyllic and voluptuous paintings on classical themes, decorative allegories representing the arts or pastoral occupations, intended as a sort of two-dimensional furniture...

 but abandoned his master's rococo

Rococo

Rococo , also referred to as "Late Baroque", is an 18th-century style which developed as Baroque artists gave up their symmetry and became increasingly ornate, florid, and playful...

 manner in the 1760s, to paint in a conscious revival of the academic classicism of Nicolas Poussin

Nicolas Poussin

Nicolas Poussin was a French painter in the classical style. His work predominantly features clarity, logic, and order, and favors line over color. His work serves as an alternative to the dominant Baroque style of the 17th century...

. His cycle of religious paintings for Montmerle Charterhouse near Dijon lies securely in the mainstream of French religious painting. His enormous Battle of the Greeks and Trojans over the Body of Patroclus is an example of the new direction of official art in France. In his unusual and precocious choice of medieval subjects, as they were commissioned by the official Bâtiments du roi

Bâtiments du Roi

The Bâtiments du Roi was a division of Department of the household of the Kings of France in France under the Ancien Régime. It was responsible for building works at the King's residences in and around Paris.-History:...

, his work foreshadowed the style troubadour of the 19th century.

His son, also a painter, was Nicolas-Guy-Antoine Brenet (1773–1846).