In Rohan at the Louvre, the character known as the Painter is the long-dead creator of the artwork Noire, the central object of the story. In the 2023 live-action film adaptation, he is given the name Maurice Legrand. He was a French painter who, centuries before the events of the story, sought to create a painting using the blackest ink ever known. To obtain this ink, he cut down a one-thousand-year-old tree without the approval of the Emperor, a violation for which he was executed. The painting itself survived because a curator of the Louvre saved it from destruction, and it remained hidden in the museum's archives for roughly two hundred years. The Painter's role in the story is indirect but foundational: his creation becomes a legendary cursed object, and the tale of the darkest and most evil painting is what ultimately brings the manga artist Rohan Kishibe to the Louvre. The painting brings death to those who come near it, and its curse endures long after the Painter's death, shaping the events Rohan uncovers during his investigation. His notable ability is his skill as a painter, specifically his production of an ink of unmatched blackness, which gave his work a supernatural power beyond ordinary art. His defining relationship in the narrative is with his own creation, since Noire and its history connect him to the woman who first told Rohan about the painting, to the Louvre staff who guard it, and to Rohan himself. His personality and private motivations are not depicted; he appears in the narrative only through the record of his crime, his execution, and the painting he left behind.