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Born during the Golden Age of Danish art, the period of such Danish thinkers and artists as Hans Christian Andersen, Søren Kierkegaard, and Bertel Thorvaldsen, Christian Frederic Eckardt became a painter of luminous marine views.   Eckardt began his artistic studies in Copenhagen at the young age of thirteen. Munich, Dresden, Venice and Rome provided a greater attraction for Danish artists than Paris, and at the age of 21, he traveled to Germany and Italy to perfect his marine views. Eckardt made his Paris Salon debut in 1856 with a View of Venice, and became a perennial exhibitor after 1859. Success came shortly thereafter, and he was awarded Neuhausen prizes in 1863 and 1871.

Jules Dupré was born in Nantes on April 15, 1811. His father was an artist who decorated porcelain and held the position of director at several porcelain manufactories. In 1822, Dupré worked for his father as an apprentice porcelain decorator. His early training as an artist was in the industrial arts, as it was for many of his contemporaries. While working with his father, he also executed drawings and paintings from nature.

Dupré was influenced by his close association with landscape painters Jean-Louis DeMarne and Jean-Victor Bertin and in 1829 he went to Paris where he further developed as an artist through his friendship with Louis-Nicolas Cabat. Associations with the artists Decamps, Jeanron, and Huet were also formed at this time.

Traveling to Great Britain in 1831, Dupré made a study of the paintings by English landscape artists. He also sketched and returned to France with a portfolio of imagery. His travels did not stop there though, and the French provinces also provided great inspiration for the young artist. Early success came when he began exhibiting in the 1830s, especially in 1833 when four of his works were accepted into the Salon. Official recognition came in 1835 when he exhibited four landscapes at the Salon and received a third-class medal. He also included works in regional exhibitions, which were becoming increasingly important as they supported and promoted local painters and upcoming Parisian artists.

It was at this time that Dupré became a key figure in the Barbizon group. He developed close ties with other Barbizon painters and began to promote relations with independent art dealers. When Dupré showed seven paintings at the 1839 Salon, it was to be his last exhibition until 1852, and a turning point in his career. This was due to the insensitivity of the jury and the lack of understanding of many of his colleagues. Together with Cabat, Huet, Isabey, Corot, and Rousseau, Dupré organized a petition to change the jury system.

After the 1848 Revolution Dupré became a member the commission created to reorganize the Salon. In 1849, he received the Legion d’honneur and continued to achieve financial success. At this time he reentered the Salon as an exhibitor. In 1867 he exhibited at the Exposition Centennale.

Jules Dupré had fully developed as an artist by the 1870’s and was considered one of the leading landscapists of his time. He continued to paint until his death in 1889.

 

Selected Museum Collections:

Baltimore, Walters Art Museum; Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, McMullen Museum of Art; Chicago, DePaul University Museum; Cincinnati, Art Museum; Cleveland, Museum of Art; London, National Gallery, Wallace Collection; Minneapolis, Institute of Art; New York, Frick Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art; Paris, Louvre, Mobilier National, Musée d’Orsay; Pasadena, CA, Norton Simon Museum; Rennes, Musée des Beaux-Arts; Saint Petersburg, Hermitage; San Francisco, Fine Arts Museums; Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario; Vic-sur-Seille, Musée Départemental Georges de la Tour; Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art; West Palm Beach, FL, Norton Museum of Art;

Narcisse Virgile Diaz de la Pena was one of the foremost figures of the first generation of Barbizon artists. He, along with Rousseau, Millet, Daubigny, Corot, Dupré, Jacque and Troyon, established the Barbizon movement that drew hundreds of artists to the forest of Fontainebleau over the course of the nineteenth century. The heart of Barbizon art was direct study from nature, be it landscape or the human figure. Barbizon artists were the first to narrow the gap that had traditionally existed between the direct sketch and the finished studio picture.

Diaz was born to Spanish emigrant parents on August 20, 1807 in Bordeaux. At the young age of seventeen, Diaz went to work for a printer, then for a porcelain manufacturer, where he met the young Jules Dupré and Nicolas-Louis Cabat, both of whom would also later work at Fontainebleau Forest, as well as the painter Auguste Raffet. Immersed in this group, Diaz honed his skill at the higher arts with a few lessons from François Souchon (1787-1857) and by copying at the Louvre. The works of artists such as Pierre Paul Prud’hon and Correggio inspired him, and, following this vein, his early paintings of the 1830s were romantic visions of nymphs, bathers, or Oriental women in lush, wooded settings. These catered to the popular taste for 18th century style Rococo and resulted in financial success for the young artist.

Though figure painting would always remain important for Diaz, it is his landscapes of the 1850s, 60s, and 70s, particularly those of Fontainebleau Forest, for which the artist is most remembered. Diaz met Theodore Rousseau in 1837 and showed his first Fontainebleau landscape at the Salon of that year. He began to exhibit pure landscapes without figures only after 1848, and the success of these forest interior scenes, including one which won him a first class medal at the Salon of 1848, allowed him to discontinue exhibiting publicly at the Salon after 1859. Recognized as a superb colorist in his own day, his forest interiors are richly painted with warm browns, oranges, golds and silvery tree trunks and branches. Though the artist often applied paint loosely with a broad palette knife, his acute observation of nature and natural effects was nevertheless keen. He was officially decorated even after leaving the official exhibition system when he received the Legion d’honneur in 1881. Diaz’s financial success enabled him to lend a helping hand to his friends when in need, including Troyon, Rousseau, and Millet. The artist died at Menton on November 18, 1876.

 

Selected Museum Collections:

Rijksmuseum and Municipal Museum, Amsterdam; Walters Art Museum, Baltimore; Musée départemental de l’Oise, Beauvais; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Béziers; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK; Musée Condé, Chantilly; Art Institute of Chicago; Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Cholet; Cleveland Muesum of Art; Musée national du château, Compiègne; Detroit Intsitute of Arts; Musée Magnin, Dijon; National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh; Musée de Grenoble; National Gallery of Finland, Helsinki; Mesdag Museum, The Hague; Courtauld Institute of Art, Wallace Collection, Victoria and Albert Collection and National Gallery, London; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Musée Grobet-Labadié and Musée des Beaux-Arts, Marseille; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Minneapolis Institute of Art; Tretiakoff Museum, Moscow; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Petit Palais, Musée d’Orsay and Musée du Louvre, Paris; Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen; Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Musée des Augustins, Toulouse; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Troyes; National Gallery of Art, Washington DC;

Born in Paris in 1846, Karl Pierre Daubigny was the son of, Charles Francois Daubigny, one of the original eight Barbizon painters and one of the leading landscapists of his time. Taught by his father and embracing a similar aesthetic, Karl Daubigny traveled the French countryside painting, working primarily in Auvers, Normandy and Fontainebleau. At the age of 17, Karl debuted at the Paris Salon with the painting Le Sentier et l’Ile de Vaux-sur-l’Oise . By the age of 22 he had already won several medals at the Salon.

While Karl Daubigny is often associated with an aesthetic much like that of his father, the famous Charles François Daubigny, he also was heavily influenced by Impressionism and Monet in particular. The influence of Impressionism is not surprising; the elder Daubigny was one of the greatest supporters of Monet and the Impressionists in the early years of the movement. In fact, Karl and his father made a painting trip with Monet to the canals of Zaandam during 1871 and 1872. Karl’s approach at this time emulated the freedom, the imapastic surface and the palette of Monet’s depictions of Zaandam.

Karl Daubigny died prematurely at the age of 40. His prolific contribution to the second generation of Barbizon painters is evident in his ability to convey, through his painting, his devotion to and love of nature.

 

 

Selected Museum Collections:

Paris, Musée d’Orsay; Evreux, Musée de l’Ancien Evêché; also in Aix, Amiens, Bayonne, Berlin, Brest, Honfleur, La Haye and Nancy.

Born in Melun in 1870, Georges d’Espagnat’s family moved to Paris when he was a young man. A strongly independent student, he rejected the traditional places of artistic education available in the capital, claiming to have spent only four hours at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Instead he attended classes at the free academy and drew at the Louvre. D’Espagnat began his public career at the Salon des Refusées in 1891, and later exhibited at the Salon of the Société Nationale and the Salon des Independents, both venues known for their openness to modern trends. In 1903 d’Espagnat, along with the architect Frantz Jourdain and critic Ivanhoe Rambosson, founded the Salon d’Automne with the purpose of creating an alternative exhibition venue for young artists and for retrospectives of the modern artists who had been rejected at the end of the earlier century.

D’Espagnat became closely acquainted with many of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists including Renoir, Vuillard, Andre, Bonnard and Denis.  Between 1905-10, he stayed with Renoir on several occasions accompanied by Valtat, and visited Italy, Spain, Portugal London, Dresden, Munich and Antwerp.

 

Selected Museum Collections:

Bordeaux, Musée des Beaux-Arts; Brussels, Musée Royaux de Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Musée d’Art Moderne; Douai, Musée de la Chartreuse; Nantes, Musée des Beaux-Arts; New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lehman Collection; Paris, Musée Eugène Delacroix; Paris, Musée d’Orsay; Rouen, Musée des Beaux-Arts; Saint-Tropez, Musée d‘Annonciade;

French Academic painter Charles Edouard Boutibonne was born in Hungary to French parents. As a young man he studied in the Viennese Academy with Friedrich Amerling. He moved to France in 1837 and became a pupil of Achille Devéria and later studied with Franz Winterhalter.

 

Boutibonne painted many works in Paris, primarily for the court of Napoleon III. He received a medal at the Salon of 1847. In 1854 he traveled to England to paint society portraits, including those of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. He exhibited his work at the Royal Academy in London in 1856 and 1857. Later, he travelled and painted in Switzerland, where spent the later part of his life until his death in 1897.

 

Selected Museum Collections:

The Royal Collection, London; Musée National du Château de Compiègne; Albright Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY

Although she was one of the most celebrated animal painters in France during the Second Empire, Rosa Bonheur’s renown was even more widespread in Britain and America than in her own country. She made her fame on several large works executed early in her career which were exhibited internationally. Her father, Raymond Bonheur, a social radical, painted portraits and landscapes and taught drawing in Bordeaux. All five of his children became artists as well. In 1828 Raymond Bonheur moved to Paris to further his career and was followed there by his family the next year.

 

Rosa proved precocious and began to study with her father at an early age. She sketched in the Paris parks, copied Old Masters in the Louvre and studied animal anatomy in the Roule slaughterhouse, where she first adopted male attire for its greater convenience. After exhibiting a painting of two rabbits and one of goats and sheep at the 1841 Salon, she continued to participate in the Salons throughout the decade, winning many medals. Her Ploughing in the Nivernais, commissioned by the State in 1848, entered the Luxembourg Museum in 1849, the year she succeeded her father as director of the Paris Free School of Design for Young Girls. Her early travels included the Auvergne, southern France, the Pyrenees and Germany. About 1852, work commenced on The Horse Fair   (Metropolitan Museum), which was shown at the 1853 Salon at which the artist was exempted from further competition by special decree. This enormous painting of rearing and thrashing horses at the Paris Horse Market, which remained unsurpassed in her work for grandeur of composition and directness of observation, was eventually purchased by Ernest Gambart, who featured it in the 1855 French Exhibition in his Pall Mall Gallery in London. The following year Gambart conducted Rosa Bonheur on a triumphal tour of England and Scotland, during which she was befriended by Queen Victoria and met Sir E. H. Landseer, whose pictures of animals she had previously known only through engravings.

 

After exhibiting in 1855 Haymaking in the Auvergne, also acquired by the Luxembourg, she ceased almost entirely to enter works in the Salons, although she was represented in the 1867 Exposition Universelle by nine works, including Sheep by the Sea belonging to the Empress Eugenie. In 1858-59, Rosa Bonheur bought a chateau in the hamlet of By, near Fontainebleau, which provided her with adequate space for the large menagerie of animals that she used as models. There she remained with her constant companion, the still life painter Nathalie Micas, producing her animal subjects, many of which were sold abroad through her dealer Gambart. Late in her career she turned to American western subjects, inspired by the 1889 visit to France of Colonel William F. Cody (Buffalo Bill) and his traveling show. Among her many awards was the Cross of the Legion of Honor presented to her personally in her studio by the Empress Eugenie, membership in the Antwerp Institute offered in 1868, the Leopold Cross, and the Commander’s Cross of the Royal Order of Isabella the Catholic, both presented in 1880, and elevation in 1894 to the rank of Officer of the Legion on Honor.

 

Selected Museum Collections:

Bordeaux, Musée des Beaux-Arts; Buffalo, NY, Albright-Knox Art Gallery; Chantilly, Musée Condé; Cleveland Museum of Art; Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek; Detroit Institute of Arts; Evreux, Musée de l’Ancien Evêché; Fontainebleua, Musée national du château; Hanover, NH, Hood Museum; Lille, Palais des Beaux-Arts; London, Wallace Collection, National Gallery; Minneapolis Institute of Arts; Montauban, Musée Ingres; New York, Metropolitan Museum, Dahesh Museum; Paris, Musée d’Orsay, Louvre; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Sarasota, FL, Ringling Museum; Stockton, CA, Haggin Museum; Vernon, Musée Alphonse-Georges Poulain; Washington, D.C., National Museum of Women in the Arts;