Born in Clamecy, he studied under Boullogne and frère Luc. He was admitted to the Académie de Saint-Luc on 23 March 1695[2] and won several prizes (including the second prize in the 1687 prix de Rome for Noah's Flood) at the Académie royale, to which he was admitted on 30 April 1701. Specialising in grisailles, he was listed on 2 March 1709 as still not having provided his academy work, whose subject was Neptune's Dispute with Minerva, or the Naming of the City of Athens.
He was described by Pierre-Jean Mariette as an artist who had "little love for work" and who adopted "bad conduct, which continually forced him to struggle with need:.[3] Even so, he produced paintings for the menagerie at the Palace of Versailles in 1702 and 1703 and produced a May for Notre-Dame in Paris in 1704 (Jesus in the House of Martha and Mary, now in the Musée des beaux-arts d'Arras).
He also produced several drawings to be engraved and a teaching model for a polisher in Paris.[4] He also worked for the publisher Jean Mariette, who commissioned fashion plates, pastoral scenes and religious images from him.[5] These include a set of twelve scenes of rural subject matter, once thought to be by Jacques Stella, representing the months,[6] and a number of illustrations for Les Vies des SS. Pères des déserts d’Orient published in 1711.[7] He died in Paris.
^François Marandet, "New Findings on the Life and Work of Claude Simpol", The Metropolitan Museum Journal, n° 47, 2012, p. 109-118.
^(in French) Jules Guiffrey, Histoire de l’Académie de Saint-Luc, Paris, 1915, p. 449.
^(in French) Philippe de Chennevières and Anatole de Montaiglon éd., Abecedario de P. J. Mariette et autres notes inédites de cet amateur sur les arts et les artistes, 6 vols., Paris, 1858–59, vol. 5, p. 222–223
^(in French) Maxime Préaud, Inventaire du fonds français, graveurs du s-XVII, tome 13 : Pierre Lepautre, Paris, 2008, n° 589.
^Barbara Brejon de Lavergnée, Pascale Cugy, "The “Album Elye” in the Louvre : Claude Simpol, Matthieu Elye, Bernard Picart, and Jean Mariette", Master Drawings, vol. 51, n° 4, 2013, p. 451-470.
^Jamie Mulherron, "Claude Simpol’s Divertissemens for Jean Mariette", Print Quarterly, vol. XXV, n° 1, 2008, pp. 23-36
^ Les vies des SS. Pères des déserts d’Orient : Avec des Figures qui représentent l’austérité de leur vie, & leur principales occupations. Nouvelle édition. Tome second. À Paris, chez Jean Mariette, rue st. Jacques, aux Colonnes d’Hercules. M. DCC. XI.
