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The Private Collection of Edgar Degas, fully digitized text from The Metropolitan Museum of Art libraries (see Degas and Cézanne: Savagery and Refinement, pp. 197–220) |
Société Paul Cezanne |
John Rewald Papers |
Barnes Foundation Archives |
Paul Rosenberg Archives |
Lionello Venturi Archive |
Hippolyte-Paul Delaroche (French pronunciation: [ipɔlit pɔl dəlaʁɔʃ]; Paris, 17 July 1797 – Paris, 4 November 1856) was a French painter who achieved his greater successes painting historical scenes. He became famous in Europe for his melodramatic depictions that often portrayed subjects from English and French history. The emotions emphasised in Delaroche's paintings appeal to Romanticism while the detail of his work along with the deglorified portrayal of historic figures follow the trends of Academicism and Neoclassicism. Delaroche aimed to depict his subjects and history with pragmatic realism. He did not consider popular ideals and norms in his creations, but rather painted all his subjects in the same light whether they were historical figures like Marie-Antoinette, figures of Christianity, or people of his time like Napoleon Bonaparte. Delaroche was a leading pupil of Antoine-Jean Gros and later mentored a number of notable artists such as Thomas Couture, Jean-Léon Gérôme, and Jean-François Millet. |
Delaroche was born into a generation that saw the stylistic conflicts between Romanticism and Davidian Classicism. Davidian Classicism was widely accepted and enjoyed by society so as a developing artist at the time of the introduction of Romanticism in Paris, Delaroche found his place between the two movements. Subjects from Delaroche's medieval and sixteenth and seventeenth-century history paintings appealed to Romantics while the accuracy of information along with the highly finished surfaces of his paintings appealed to Academics and Neoclassicism. Delaroche's works completed in the early 1830s most reflected the position he took between the two movements and were admired by contemporary artists of the time—the Execution of Lady Jane Grey (1833; National Gallery, London) was the most acclaimed of Delaroche's paintings in its day. Later in the 1830s, Delaroche exhibited the first of his major religious works. His change of subject and "the painting’s austere manner" were ill-received by critics and after 1837, he stopped exhibiting his work altogether. At the time of his death in 1856, he was painting a series of four scenes from the Life of the Virgin. Only one work from this series was completed: the Virgin Contemplating the Crown of Thorns. |
Biography |
Delaroche was born in Paris and stayed there for the majority of his life. Most of his works were completed in his studio on Rue Mazarine. His subjects were painted with a firm, solid, smooth surface, which gave an appearance of the highest finish. This texture was the manner of the day and was also found in the works of Vernet, Ary Scheffer, Louis Léopold Robert and Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. Among his students were Gustave Boulanger, British landscape artist Henry Mark Anthony, British history painters Edward Armitage and Charles Lucy, and American painter/photographer Alfred Boisseau (1823–1901). |
The first Delaroche picture exhibited was the large Jehosheba saving Joash (1822). This exhibition led to his acquaintance with Théodore Géricault and Eugène Delacroix, with whom he formed the core of a large group of Parisian historical painters. He visited Italy in 1838 and 1843, when his father-in-law, Horace Vernet, was director of the French Academy in Rome. In 1845, he was elected into the National Academy of Design, New York, as an Honorary Academician. |
Early life |
Paul Delaroche was born into the petty lord de la Roche family, a family of artists, dealers, collectors, and art administrators. His father, Gregoire-Hippolyte Delaroche, was a prominent art dealer in Paris. Paul Delaroche was the second of two sons and was introduced to fine art at a young age. At age nineteen, Delaroche was afforded by his father the opportunity to study at L'École des Beaux-Arts under the instruction of Louis Étienne Watelet. Delaroche was influenced by his father to focus on landscapes while he was at L’École because his brother, Jules-Hippolyte Delaroche, already focused on painting history. After two years at L’École, Delaroche voiced his lack of interest in landscapes and acted on his overall disenchantment with the French academic system by leaving L'École des Beaux-Art in at the end of 1817. The following year he entered the studio of Antoine-Jean Gros where he was able to pursue his greater interest in history painting. |
Artistic independence |
Delaroche's debuted at the Salon in 1822 where he exhibited Christ Descended from the Cross (1822: Paris, Pal. Royale, Chapelle) and Jehosheba Saving Joash (1822; Troyes, Mus. B.-A. & Archéol). The latter was a product of Gros's influence and was praised by Géricault who supported the beginning of Romanticism. The schooling Delaroche received at L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts tied him to the ideas of Academicism and Neo-Classicism while his time spent in the studio of Gros aroused his interest in history and its representation through Romanticism. His painting, Joan of Arc in Prison (1824; Rouen, Mus. B.-A.), which was exhibited in the Salon of 1824, along with his following works reflect the middle ground he occupied. Delaroche studied the recent tradition of English history painting at the time, which he incorporated into his own productions. In 1828 he exhibited the first of his English history paintings, Death of Queen Elizabeth. Delaroche's focus on English history brought him popularity in Britain in the 1830s and 1840s. In the 1830s, he produced some of his most lauded works, including Cromwell Gazing at the Body of Charles I (1831. Mus. B.-A., Nîmes), The Princes in the Tower (1831, Louvre, Paris) and his most acclaimed piece, the Execution of Lady Jane Grey (1833, NG, London). Recognizing his talent and popularity, the Académie des Beaux-Arts elected Delaroche a member of the society in 1832. A year following, he became a professor at L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts. The same year, he was commissioned to paint a large mural at the central nave of L'Église de la Madeleine in Paris. Delaroche recognized his lack of experience in religious painting and so travelled for one year in Italy to educate himself on the religious works of the past. Upon his return to France, he was told he was to work with Jules-Claude Ziegler, but abandoned the project altogether thinking that Ziegler would soil the image he already had in mind. In 1837 he exhibited St. Cecilia (1836; London, V&A), which was the first of his significant religious paintings. Delaroche's change of subject was less impressive to French critics than his previous works. |
As a history painter, Delaroche aimed to present in his work a "philosophical analysis" of a historical event and link it to "the nineteenth-century understanding of historical truth and historical time." Although there are some discrepancies between history and his own history painting, Delaroche saw the importance in being faithful to the presentation of facts. German literary critic, Heinrich Heine, says "[Delaroche] has no great predilection for the past in itself, but for its representation, for the illustration of spirit, and for writing history in colours." Delaroche painted all of his subjects in the same light whether they were great historical figures from the past, founders of Christianity, or important political figures of his time like Marie Antoinette or Napoleon Bonaparte. He carefully researched the costumes and accessories and settings he included in his paintings in order to accurately present his subject. To accentuate historical accuracy, Delaroche painted with meticulous detail and finished his paintings with clear contours. The varying movement of his brush strokes along with the colors and placement of his subjects give each of them a unique appearance and allows them to act in the spirit and tone of their character and the event. The public eye is less observant of fine details and nuances in painting, but Delaroche appreciated the literary value of his paintings over their pictorial value. He balances the literary aspects with the theatricality, narrativity, and visuality of his historical paintings. |
Historical works and accuracy |
His dramatic paintings include Strafford Led to Execution, depicting the English Archbishop Laud stretching his arms out of the small high window of his cell to bless Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford, as Strafford passes along the corridor to be executed, and the Assassination of the duc de Guise at Blois. Another famous work shows Cardinal Richelieu in a gorgeous barge, preceding the boat carrying Cinq-Mars and De Thou carried to their execution. Other important Delaroche works include The Princes in the Tower and La Jeune Martyre (showing a young female martyr floating dead on the Tiber). |
Delaroche's work sometimes contained historical inaccuracies. Cromwell lifting the Coffin-lid and looking at the Body of Charles is based on an urban legend. He tended to care more about dramatic effect than historical truth: see also The King in the Guardroom, where villainous Puritan soldiers blow tobacco smoke in the face of King Charles, and Queen Elizabeth Dying on the Ground. |
Later works and the close of his career |
After 1837, Delaroche stopped exhibiting his work altogether. The disappointing public reception of his painting, St. Cecilia, along with his overall rejection of Davidian values in French society and government led him to his "self-imposed exile from the government-sponsored Salons." Delaroche then commenced the creation of his most famous work, The Hemicycle, painted on a semicircular saloon at L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts. The Hemicycle was a 27-meter panoramic that included over seventy of the most famous artists since Antiquity. The artists included represent Gothic, Greek, Roman, and Renaissance art. The subjects of this painting appeal to the academic taste of the nineteenth-century. Delaroche painted with encaustic mixtures to create this monumental piece—a technique in which pigment is mixed with hot wax and painted onto the plaster to create a smooth surface. Delaroche did not complete this project alone; four of his students assisted him and together they worked from 1837 to 1841. In 1855 the work was severely damage by fire and Delaroche spent the last year of his life restoring his work. Delaroche died in 1856 and restoration was taken over by Tony Robert-Fleury, a student of Delaroche. |
Marriage to Louise Vernet |
Delaroche's love for Horace Vernet's daughter Louise was the absorbing passion of his life. He married Louise in 1835, in which year he also exhibited Head of an Angel, which was based on a study of her. It is said that Delaroche never recovered from the shock of her death in 1845 at the age of 31. After her loss he produced a sequence of small elaborate pictures of incidents in Jesus's Passion. He focused attention on the human drama of the Passion, as in a painting where Mary and the apostles hear the crowd cheering Jesus on the Via Dolorosa, and another where St. John escorts Mary home after her son's death. |
The Hémicycle |
In 1837, Delaroche received the commission for the great picture that came to be known as the Hémicycle, a Raphaelesque tableau influenced by The School of Athens. This was a mural 27 metres (88.5 ft) long, in the hemicycle of the award theatre of the École des Beaux Arts. The commission came from the École's architect, Félix Duban. The painting represents seventy-five great artists of all ages, in conversation, assembled in groups on either hand of a central elevation of white marble steps, on the topmost of which are three thrones filled by the creators of the Parthenon: sculptor Phidias, architect Ictinus, and painter Apelles, symbolizing the unity of these arts. |
To supply the female element in this vast composition he introduced the genii or muses, who symbolize or reign over the arts, leaning against the balustrade of the steps, depicted as idealized female figures. The painting is not fresco but done directly on the wall in oil. Delaroche finished the work in 1841, but it was considerably damaged by a fire in 1855. He immediately set about trying to re-paint and restore the work, but died on 4 November 1856, before he had accomplished much of this. The restoration was finished by Joseph-Nicolas Robert-Fleury. |
Fake or Fortune |
In 2016, the BBC TV programme Fake or Fortune? investigated the authenticity of a version of Delaroche's Saint Amelia, Queen of Hungary. After reviewing the show's findings, Professor Stephen Bann, a leading Delaroche expert, concluded that the version, bought for £500 in 1989 by the late art collector and dealer Neil Wilson, and housed at Castle of Park in Cornhill, Aberdeenshire, was in fact the lost original. Wilson's widow, Becky, was reported to have decided to keep the painting, but allow it to go on display at the British Museum in London when a Delaroche exhibition takes place. Subsequently, the painting was sold via Christie's in July 2019 for £33,750. |
Gallery |
Photography |
Delaroche is often quoted as saying "from today, painting is dead." The observation was probably made in 1839, when Delaroche saw examples of the Daguerreotype, the first successful photographic process. |
See also |
Charles I Insulted by Cromwell's Soldiers, the 1836 Delaroche painting thought lost in the Blitz, rediscovered in 2009. |
References |
Sources |
Bann, Stephen. 1997. Paul Delaroche: History Painted. London: Reaktion Books; Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-01745-X |
Bann, Stephen. 2006. "Paul Delaroche's Early Work in the Context of English History Painting." Oxford Art Journal, 2006. 341. |
Bann, Stephen and Linda Whiteley. 2010. Painting History: Delaroche and Lady Jane Grey. London: National Gallery Company; Distributed by Yale University Press. ISBN 978-1-85709-479-4 |
Carrier, David. Nineteenth-Century French Studies 26, no. 3/4 (1998): 476–78. JSTOR 23537629 |
Chilvers, Ian. "Delaroche, Paul." In the Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists, Oxford University Press, http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780191782763.001.0001/acref-9780191782763-e-687. |
Deines, Stefan, Stephan Jaeger, and Ansgar Nünning. 2003. Historisierte Subjekte—subjektivierte Historie: zur Verfügbarkeit und Unverfügbarkeit von Geschichte. Berlin: De Gruyter. |
Duffy, Stephen. "Delaroche and Lady Jane Grey: London." The Burlington Magazine 152, no. 1286 (2010): 338–39. JSTOR 27823182. |
Jordan, Marc. "Delaroche, Paul." The Oxford Companion to Western Art. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed 17 November 2016, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/opr/t118/e711. |
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Scott, William Bell (1911). "Delaroche, Hippolyte". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 7 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 944–945. |
Tanyol, Derin. (2000) Histoire anecdotique—the people's history? Gras and Delaroche, Word & Image, 16:1, 7–30, doi:10.1080/02666286.2000.10434302 |
Whiteley, Linda. "Delaroche." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed 4 November 2016, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T021935pg2. |
Wright, Beth S. "The Space of Time: Delaroche's Depiction of Modern Historical Narrative." Nineteenth-Century French Studies 36, no. 1/2 (2007): 72–93. JSTOR 23538480. |
Chernysheva, Maria. "Paul Delaroche: The Reception of his Work in Russia." Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. Arts 9, no. 3 (2019): 577–589. |
External links |
Delaroche returned after 70 years |
"Delaroche, Hippolyte" . Collier's New Encyclopedia. 1921. |
"Delaroche, Hippolyte" . The New Student's Reference Work . 1914. |
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (; French: [øʒɛn ɑ̃ʁi pɔl ɡoɡɛ̃]; 7 June 1848 – 8 May 1903) was a French painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramist, and writer, whose work has been primarily associated with the Post-Impressionist and Symbolist movements. He was also an influential practitioner of wood engraving and woodcuts as art forms. While only moderately successful during his lifetime, Gauguin has since been recognized for his experimental use of color and Synthetist style that were distinct from Impressionism. |
Gauguin was born in Paris in 1848, amidst the tumult of Europe's revolutionary year. In 1850, Gauguin's family settled in Peru, where he experienced a privileged childhood that left a lasting impression on him. Later, financial struggles led them back to France, where Gauguin received formal education. Initially working as a stockbroker, Gauguin started painting in his spare time, his interest in art kindled by visits to galleries and exhibitions. The financial crisis of 1882 significantly impacted his brokerage career, prompting a full-time shift to painting. Gauguin's art education was largely self-taught and informal, shaped significantly by his associations with other artists rather than academic training. His entry into the art world was facilitated by his acquaintance with Camille Pissarro, a leading Impressionist. Pissarro took on a mentor role for Gauguin, introducing him to other Impressionist artists and techniques. |
He exhibited with the Impressionists in the early 1880s, but soon began developing his distinct style, characterized by a bolder use of color and less traditional subject matter. His work in Brittany and Martinique showcased his inclination towards depicting native life and landscapes. By the 1890s, Gauguin's art took a significant turn during his time in Tahiti, then a French colony, where he sought a refuge from the Western civilization, driven by the colonialist tropes of exoticism prevalent at the time. During that time, he controversially married three adolescent Tahitian girls with whom he later fathered children. Gauguin's later years in Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands were marked by health issues and financial struggles. |
His paintings from that period, characterized by vivid colors and Symbolist themes, would prove highly successful among the European viewers for their exploration of the relationships between people, nature, and the spiritual world. Gauguin's art became popular after his death, partially from the efforts of dealer Ambroise Vollard, who organized exhibitions of his work late in his career and assisted in organizing two important posthumous exhibitions in Paris. His work was influential on the French avant-garde and many modern artists, such as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, and he is well known for his relationship with Vincent and Theo van Gogh. |
Biography |
Family history and early life |
Gauguin was born in Paris to Clovis Gauguin and Aline Chazal on 7 June 1848, the year of revolutionary upheavals throughout Europe. His father, a 34-year-old liberal journalist from a family of entrepreneurs in Orléans, was compelled to flee France when the newspaper for which he wrote was suppressed by French authorities. Gauguin's mother was the 22-year-old daughter of André Chazal, an engraver, and Flora Tristan, an author and activist in early socialist movements. Their union ended when André assaulted his wife Flora and was sentenced to prison for attempted murder. |
Paul Gauguin's maternal grandmother, Flora Tristan, was the illegitimate daughter of Thérèse Laisnay and Don Mariano de Tristan Moscoso. Details of Thérèse's family background are not known; Don Mariano came from an aristocratic Spanish family from the Peruvian city of Arequipa. He was an officer of the Dragoons. Members of the wealthy Tristan Moscoso family held powerful positions in Peru. Nonetheless, Don Mariano's unexpected death plunged his mistress and daughter Flora into poverty. When Flora's marriage with André failed, she petitioned for and obtained a small monetary settlement from her father's Peruvian relatives. She sailed to Peru in hopes of enlarging her share of the Tristan Moscoso family fortune. This never materialized; but she successfully published a popular travelogue of her experiences in Peru which launched her literary career in 1838. An active supporter of early socialist societies, Gauguin's maternal grandmother helped to lay the foundations for the 1848 revolutionary movements. Placed under surveillance by French police and suffering from overwork, she died in 1844. Her grandson Paul "idolized his grandmother, and kept copies of her books with him to the end of his life". |
In 1850, Clovis Gauguin departed for Peru with his wife Aline and young children in hopes of continuing his journalistic career under the auspices of his wife's South American relations. He died of a heart attack en route, and Aline arrived in Peru as a widow with the 18-month-old Paul and his 21⁄2 year-old sister, Marie. Gauguin's mother was welcomed by her paternal granduncle, whose son-in-law, José Rufino Echenique, would shortly assume the presidency of Peru. To the age of six, Paul enjoyed a privileged upbringing, attended by nursemaids and servants. He retained a vivid memory of that period of his childhood which instilled "indelible impressions of Peru that haunted him the rest of his life". |
Gauguin's idyllic childhood ended abruptly when his family mentors fell from political power during Peruvian civil conflicts in 1854. Aline returned to France with her children, leaving Paul with his paternal grandfather, Guillaume Gauguin, in Orléans. Deprived by the Peruvian Tristan Moscoso clan of a generous annuity arranged by her granduncle, Aline settled in Paris to work as a dressmaker. |
Education and first job |
After attending a couple of local schools, Gauguin was sent to the prestigious Catholic boarding school Petit Séminaire de La Chapelle-Saint-Mesmin. He spent three years at the school. At the age of 14, he entered the Loriol Institute in Paris, a naval preparatory school, before returning to Orléans to take his final year at the Lycée Jeanne D'Arc. Gauguin signed on as a pilot's assistant in the merchant marine. Three years later, he joined the French navy in which he served for two years. His mother died on 7 July 1867, but he did not learn of it for several months until a letter from his sister Marie caught up with him in India. |
In 1871, Gauguin returned to Paris where he secured a job as a stockbroker. A close family friend, Gustave Arosa, got him a job at the Paris Bourse; Gauguin was 23. He became a successful Parisian businessman and remained one for the next 11 years. In 1879 he was earning 30,000 francs a year (about $145,000 in 2019 US dollars) as a stockbroker, and as much again in his dealings in the art market. But in 1882 the Paris stock market crashed and the art market contracted. Gauguin's earnings deteriorated sharply and he eventually decided to pursue painting full-time. |
Marriage |
In 1873, he married a Danish woman, Mette-Sophie Gad (1850–1920). Over the next ten years, they had five children: Émile (1874–1955); Aline (1877–1897); Clovis (1879–1900); Jean René (1881–1961); and Paul Rollon (1883–1961). By 1884, Gauguin had moved with his family to Copenhagen, Denmark, where he pursued a business career as a tarpaulin salesman. It was not a success: He could not speak Danish, and the Danes did not want French tarpaulins. Mette became the chief breadwinner, giving French lessons to trainee diplomats. |
His middle-class family and marriage fell apart after 11 years when Gauguin was driven to paint full-time. He returned to Paris in 1885, after his wife and her family asked him to leave because he had renounced the values they shared. Gauguin's last physical contact with them was in 1891, and Mette eventually broke with him decisively in 1894. |
First paintings |
In 1873, around the time he became a stockbroker, Gauguin began painting in his free time. His Parisian life centered on the 9th arrondissement of Paris. Gauguin lived at 15, rue la Bruyère. Nearby were the cafés frequented by the Impressionists. Gauguin also visited galleries frequently and purchased work by emerging artists. He formed a friendship with Camille Pissarro and visited him on Sundays to paint in his garden. Pissarro introduced him to various other artists. In 1877 Gauguin "moved downmarket and across the river to the poorer, newer, urban sprawls" of Vaugirard. Here, on the third floor at 8 rue Carcel, he had his first home with a studio. |
His close friend Émile Schuffenecker, a former stockbroker who also aspired to become an artist, lived close by. Gauguin showed paintings in Impressionist exhibitions held in 1881 and 1882 (earlier, a sculpture of his son Émile had been the only sculpture in the 4th Impressionist Exhibition of 1879). His paintings received dismissive reviews, although several of them, such as The Market Gardens of Vaugirard, are now highly regarded. |
In 1882, the stock market crashed and the art market contracted. Paul Durand-Ruel, the Impressionists' primary art dealer, was especially affected by the crash, and for a period of time stopped buying pictures from painters such as Gauguin. Gauguin's earnings contracted sharply, and over the next two years he slowly formulated his plans to become a full-time artist. The following two summers, he painted with Pissarro and occasionally Paul Cézanne. |
In October 1883, he wrote to Pissarro saying that he had decided to make his living from painting at all costs and asked for his help, which Pissarro at first readily provided. The following January, Gauguin moved with his family to Rouen, where they could live more cheaply and where he thought he had discerned opportunities when visiting Pissarro there the previous summer. However, the venture proved unsuccessful, and by the end of the year Mette and the children moved to Copenhagen, Gauguin following shortly after in November 1884, bringing with him his art collection, which subsequently remained in Copenhagen. |
Life in Copenhagen proved equally difficult, and their marriage grew strained. At Mette's urging, supported by her family, Gauguin returned to Paris the following year. |
France 1885–1886 |
After a brief period in Italy, spent in the small towns of San Salvo and Ururi, Gauguin returned to Paris in June 1885, accompanied by his six-year-old son Clovis. The other children remained with Mette in Copenhagen, where they had the support of family and friends while Mette herself was able to get work as a translator and French teacher. Gauguin initially found it difficult to re-enter the art world in Paris and spent his first winter back in real poverty, obliged to take a series of menial jobs. Clovis eventually fell ill and was sent to a boarding school, Gauguin's sister Marie providing the funds. During this first year, Gauguin produced very little art. He exhibited 19 paintings and a wood relief at the eighth (and last) Impressionist exhibition in May 1886. |
Most of these paintings were earlier work from Rouen or Copenhagen and there was nothing really novel in the few new ones, although his Baigneuses à Dieppe ("Women Bathing") introduced what was to become a recurring motif, the woman in the waves. Nevertheless, Félix Bracquemond did purchase one of his paintings. This exhibition also established Georges Seurat as leader of the avant-garde movement in Paris. Gauguin contemptuously rejected Seurat's Neo-Impressionist Pointillist technique and later in the year broke decisively with Pissarro, who from that point on was rather antagonistic towards Gauguin. |
Gauguin spent the summer of 1886 in the artist's colony of Pont-Aven in Brittany. He was attracted in the first place because it was cheap to live there. However, he found himself an unexpected success with the young art students who flocked there in the summer. His naturally pugilistic temperament (he was both an accomplished boxer and fencer) was no impediment in the socially relaxed seaside resort. He was remembered during that period as much for his outlandish appearance as for his art. Amongst these new associates was Charles Laval, who would accompany Gauguin the following year to Panama and Martinique. |
That summer, he executed some pastel drawings of nude figures in the manner of Pissarro and those by Degas exhibited at the 1886 eighth Impressionist exhibition. He mainly painted landscapes such as La Bergère Bretonne ("The Breton Shepherdess"), in which the figure plays a subordinate role. His Jeunes Bretons au bain ("Young Breton Boys Bathing"), introducing a theme he returned to each time he visited Pont-Aven, is clearly indebted to Degas in its design and bold use of pure colour. The naive drawings of the English illustrator Randolph Caldecott, used to illustrate a popular guide-book on Brittany, had caught the imagination of the avant-garde student artists at Pont-Aven, anxious to free themselves from the conservatism of their academies, and Gauguin consciously imitated them in his sketches of Breton girls. These sketches were later worked up into paintings back in his Paris studio. The most important of these is Four Breton Women, which shows a marked departure from his earlier Impressionist style as well as incorporating something of the naive quality of Caldecott's illustration, exaggerating features to the point of caricature. |
Gauguin, along with Émile Bernard, Charles Laval, Émile Schuffenecker and many others, re-visited Pont-Aven after his travels in Panama and Martinique. The bold use of pure colour and Symbolist choice of subject matter distinguish what is now called the Pont-Aven School. Disappointed with Impressionism, Gauguin felt that traditional European painting had become too imitative and lacked symbolic depth. By contrast, the art of Africa and Asia seemed to him full of mystic symbolism and vigour. There was a vogue in Europe at the time for the art of other cultures, especially that of Japan (Japonism). He was invited to participate in the 1889 exhibition organized by Les XX. |
Cloisonnism and synthetism |
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