Lemierre was born in
Paris to a poor family but secured patronage from the collector-general of taxes,
Dupin, eventually becoming his secretary. Lemierre achieved his initial theatrical success with
Hypermnestre (1758);
Titre (1761) and
Idomne (1764) failed on account of the subjects.
Artaxerce, modelled on
Metastasio, and
Guillaume Tell were produced in 1766; other successful tragedies were
La Veuve de Malabar (1770) and
Barnavelt (1784). He was admitted to the
Académie française in 1780. In 1786, Lemierre successfully revived
Guillaume Tell to great acclaim. Following the
French Revolution, Lemierre expressed profound remorse for having produced a play that promoted revolutionary ideals. It is widely believed that the trauma of witnessing the revolution's excesses contributed to his untimely death. Lemierre published
La Peinture (1769), based on a
Latin poem by the abbé de Marsy, and a poem in six cantos.
Les Fastes, ou les usages de lannie (1779), an unsatisfactory imitation of
Ovid's
Fasti. His
Œuvres (1810) contain a notice of Lemierre by R. Perrin. and his
Œuvres choisies (1811) contain one by F. Fayolle. ==References==