French painter, architect, and sculptor, son of the miniaturist Jean-Baptiste Gilles. (Colson is also referred to as Jean-François Gilles-Colson.) Colson was likely the pupil of Donat Nonnotte and Imbert of the Lorraine School. He specialised in portraits and genre scenes, and his position as director and coordinator of building at the Château de Navarre, the family residence of Charles-Godefroy de la Tour d'Auvergne, Sovereign Duke of Bouillon, Prince of Turenne (in whose personal service Colson worked for forty years), forced him to become engineer, architect, landscaper and even sculptor. Very much a man of letters, Colson wrote treatises on perspective, lectured at the Lycée des Arts in Paris, and wrote reviews of exhibitions and salons. He exhibited his own work at the Salons of 1793, 1795 and 1797, and - a year before his death - was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences and a member of the Academy of Arts and Letters of Dijon, his home town. //