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J. Clinton Shepherd was born in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1888. His art studies were extensive, having attended the University of Missouri, Kansas City School of Fine Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago. A painter, illustrator, and sculptor of western subjects, Shepherd exhibited extensively in the east, and in Florida, where he died in 1975.

For more information on J. Clinton Shepherd and other artists we represent, please visit the artist index on our gallery website

Luigi Lucioni was born in the northern Italian town of Malante, near Milan. His family immigrated to America when he was ten and settled in Jersey City, New Jersey. As a teenager, Lucioni helped support his family by working as an etcher for the New York Herald-Tribune, and from 1916 to 1920, he studied at the Cooper Union Art School. From 1921 to 1924, he was enrolled in life classes at the National Academy of Design. He studied etching with William Auerbach Levy and also worked under William Starkweather, an Impressionist artist who had worked with Joachin Sorolla y Bastida. In 1924, Lucioni was awarded a Tiffany Foundation scholarship, which enabled him to paint at the Tiffany estate on Long Island. The following year Lucioni traveled to Europe and spent two months in Italy. He studied the meticulous draftsmanship and technique of the Italian early Renaissance painters, especially Massaccio, Masolino da Panicale, and Piero della Francesca.

 

Lucioni returned to New York “frightfully interested in classic realism,”[1] and began to produce landscapes, still lifes, and portraits in his Washington Square studio. He gained the most recognition for his meticulously detailed, carefully composed, and vividly colored still lifes. He acknowledged that his early work in this genre was influenced by his study of Cezanne: “I began to do a lot of still lifes and his forced perspective I liked very much, sort of looking down on things.”[2]

 

Lucioni had his first one-man exhibition at the Ferargil Galleries in New York in 1927. His paintings quickly earned him national recognition and sold well, even in the difficult economic climate of the Depression. When The Metropolitan Museum of Art purchased one of his still lifes, Dahlias and Apples, in 1932, he became the youngest living artist to be represented there. Lucioni maintained a busy exhibition schedule, showing his work at group shows throughout the country, including those held at the National Academy of Design, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Corcoran Gallery of Art (biennials), Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Carnegie Institute. In addition to Ferargil Galleries, the Associated American Artists Gallery and the Milch Gallery also handled his work.

 

Lucioni visited Vermont for the first time in 1929. The rolling, verdant hills reminded him of his family home in Italy, and in 1939 he purchased a farmhouse in Manchester. There he painted landscapes in a crisp, detailed style that critics likened to photography. He maintained his studio in Washington Square until 1945, when he began to spend most of his time in Vermont. He continued to send his paintings to the National Academy of Design annuals until his death in 1988.

 

A modest, hardworking man, Lucioni decided early in his career that he wanted to be a realist. Despite the many different artistic styles and fads that he witnessed over the course of his life, his approach to painting remained remarkably consistent. He said, “…I never worried about whether I was stylish or not stylish. It didn’t make any difference to me. I just feel you do what you do, you are what you are.”[3] Lucioni perfected his realist technique by painting every day, and his disciplined approach is echoed in the technical virtuosity with which he executed his still-life arrangements.

In 1988, after the dispersal of the artist’s estate, many of his paintings were bequeathed to the Shelburne Museum in Vermont. Other institutions that own Lucioni’s work are The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Carnegie Museum of Art; Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.; Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts; and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, England.

 

[1] Robert Brown, “Oral History Interview with Luigi Lucioni in Manchester, Vermont, July 6, 1971,” (http://archivesofamericanart,si.edu/oralhist/lucion71), accessed May 2003.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

Born in Paris on 4 July 1848, Louis-Robert Carrier-Belleuse grew up watching his father, Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse, earn his living as a practicing artist. The elder Carrier-Belleuse entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1840 under the auspices of sculptor David d’Angers, but he elected to study decorative arts at the Petite Ecole shortly thereafter, perhaps because he felt that it would offer a better livelihood for his growing family. When Louis-Robert was only two years old, his father accepted a job in England where he designed ceramics and metalwork models for the Wedgwood factory, among others. This interlude lasted five years, until 1855 when the family returned to France where Albert-Ernest found work in Napoleon III’s massive urban renewal projects for Paris. Throughout these years, the young Louis-Robert studied with his father, absorbing his basic art education through direct observation, on-the-job training, and paternal instruction.
 
Eventually, Louis-Robert entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts where he focused his studies on painting. Under the direction of Alexandre Cabanel and Gustave Boulanger, two of the most successful painters of the era, Carrier-Belleuse mastered the academic techniques of drawing from plaster casts of famous sculptures, and in due course, the live model. In 1870, just as the Second Empire was coming to its disastrous conclusion, Carrier-Belleuse made his debut at the annual Salon. The eruption of the Franco-Prussian War disrupted life significantly; although it is unknown whether or not the 22-year-old Carrier-Belleuse served in the French Army, most young men performed their military duty at this age. 
 
As a result of the war—and the internecine bloodshed of the Commune—life in Paris was fundamentally changed. The city had been beaten and battered, and the political divisions among the citizenry were both painful and raw. The arts community was no exception. Traditionalists who supported the academic canon were impatient with the increasing number of artists who advocated for a fresh approach to painting as well as new venues in which to exhibit their work. Carrier-Belleuse, while not as radical as the Impressionists, nevertheless found his voice as a “painter of modern life” to cite Charles Baudelaire’s famous phrase. Like Constantin Guys, the painter that Baudelaire held up as his example, Carrier-Belleuse captured the daily life of Parisian streets. His images included people from all walks of life, whether it illustrated workingmen delivering sacks of flour in Porteurs de farine of 1885, or casual strollers on the grand boulevards as in The Bookseller of 1881. In both of these images, the painter’s academic education is obvious in the clear delineation of the human body, but his choice of urban subject matter suggests the influence of Degas or Steinlen, especially in the seemingly random combinations of anonymous figures going about their daily routine.
 
Carrier-Belleuse also occasionally painted amusing genre scenes such as The Animal Sculptor. This undated work depicts the sculptor (perhaps Carrier-Belleuse himself) in his studio trying to grab a bite of lunch while the plaster swan on his worktable appears to be interrupting him. Nearby, two live swans observe this action, presumably a bit miffed that they are not being fed as well. The joke is purely visual, and it remains comical today precisely because it does not depend on any external narrative. What is even more intriguing is the compositional structure that Carrier-Belleuse created; the standard two-point perspective grid is offset by a technique that Degas often used of undermining the spatial organization by drawing parallel lines that will not meet at the hypothetical horizon.
 
In 1889, Carrier-Belleuse accepted an appointment as artistic director of the Hippolyte Boulenger & Cie faience manufactory at Clichy-le-Roi where he designed new forms for the earthenware sculpture and pottery. That same year, Hippolyte Boulenger opened a retail store at 18 rue Paradis in Paris to showcase the new designs being produced. In fact, the building itself functioned as a ‘catalogue’ of the ceramic tiles from Choisy-le-Roi. [i]
 
The year 1889 was momentous. Not only did Carrier-Belleusebegin his tenure at Clichy-le-Roi, but he also received a Silver Medal at the Exposition Universelle. In addition, his contributions to France’s art and culture were recognized with the Legion of Honor medal. At this time, he also began to focus increasingly on sculpture, particularly portrait busts. 
 
One of the more curious developments of Carrier-Belleuse’s career was the establishment of his reputation as a sculptor in Central American nations. This appears to have begun with a commission for the tomb of the liberal reformer and modernizer of Guatemala, President Justo Rufino Barrios, who died in April 1885. This in turn led to a large sculptural group designed as a National Monument for Costa Rica in 1890. Located in San José’s Parque Nacional near the Congress Building, the bronze monument commemorates the heroes of Costa Rican freedom. When it was unveiled during Independence Day celebrations on September 15, 1895, the Costa Rican people saw seven figures, five of them women. These allegorical figures represented the nations of Central America—Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras—each carrying some type of weapon to defend her sovereignty against foreign invaders. The sixth figure is the American military expansionist, William Walker, who attempted to annex Central America to the United States in 1855-57. Carrier-Belleuse depicted him hiding his face from the female defenders of freedom. The seventh figure, a fallen soldier, serves as a universal reminder of the human cost of warfare.
 
The last decade of Carrier-Belleuse’s career was devoted primarily to sculpture and large-scale faience projects. When he died on 15 June 1913, his passing was noted not only in France, but also in the newspapers in London and New York. 

                                                            Janet Whitmore, Ph.D.

 
 
Selected museums
 
Dahesh Museum, New York
Musee d’Art et d’Archeologie, Moulins, France
Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Musée du Petit Palais, Paris
Musée de Rochefort, Rochefort, France
 
 
[i] Philippe Meunier and Jean Alonso Defrocourt, “Evolution of Choisy-le-Roi Manufactory with Hippolyte Boulenger”, Majolica Matters, March 2006, 7-9.
A lifelong Londoner, Henry Jutsum was born in 1816 shortly after the British defeated Napoleon for the last time and assumed a renewed leadership position in the world. As a pioneering industrialized nation, Britain’s economy in the early nineteenth century was significantly more stable than continental Europe’s war-torn regions, many of which were still primarily agrarian economies with little industrial technology. For the British arts community, this relative stability encouraged a measured pace of experimentation within the framework of the existing academic standards.
 
Jutsum began his artistic education in Devon, where he may have had family, but then returned to Kensington in London to continue his studies. By age 14, in 1830, he apprenticed to the Norwich School painter, James Stark, who had just returned to London after a ten-year stay in Norfolk. At this time, Stark was midway through his publication on The Scenery of the Rivers of Norfolk, which would be completed in 1834; his illustrations for this project reflect the strong topographical emphasis of the Norwich School, and no doubt provided an important influence on the impressionable Jutsum. 
 
British landscape painting in the 1830s was at the peak of its influence—an especially propitious time for a young artist to establish his reputation in the field. With Stark’s guidance, Julsum would have absorbed the ideas and principles of the Norwich School, one of the first regional landscape painting groups in Europe. Led by John Crome and John Sell Cotman, the Society held annual exhibitions from 1805 to1833, emphasizing the importance of direct observation of nature. Like their better known colleague, John Constable, the Norwich School painters developed their images outdoors in front of the motifs they hoped to capture on canvas. The most important influences came not from the Italian and French classical traditions, but from the baroque schools of Dutch and Flemish landscapists, particularly Meindert Hobbema whose paintings were collected by many of the wealthy aristocrats and merchants of Norfolk.
 
Although much of his painting remains undated, the stylistic progression of Jutsum’s work echoes the development of English landscape painting. Works such as A Hunting Party appears to be an early attempt, reminiscent of eighteenth century pastorals with small figures in aristocratic costume and gauzy, Gainsborough style trees. A later work from 1845, The River Kidd Near Knaresborough, or the undated Bridge with Cattle, reveal a much more sophisticated hand; here Jutsum concentrates on the tangible features of the landscapes with scientifically precise cloud formations and careful attention to botanical accuracy. These features are characteristic of his work throughout his mature career, whether in oil paintings or in watercolors. As Patrick Noon notes in Crossing the Channel, the naturalism of this generation of British landscape painters “called for a dynamic interaction between an individual mind and an observable but protean world. It was at once more scientific and more sensate. While it was the duty of the modern artist to mirror the natural world, the poetry of landscape painting as a high art resided more significantly in the artist’s ability to communicate subjective impressions before those phenomena, however trivial or sublime they might be.” [i]
 
By the mid-1830s, Jutsum had begun to establish a reputation as a successful landscape painter. Although still quite young, he exhibited his works at the British Institution, a private art club, and presumably was able to attract the attention of the many collectors associated with that organization. At some point during this decade, he also seems to have become intensely committed to working in watercolor. The reasons for this remain unknown, but it is certainly likely that the work of John Sell Cotman, a leading member of the Norwich School, may have been an important influence. 
 
In 1843 Jutsum was elected a member of The Associated Painters in Water-
Colours, an organization founded in 1831 under the name of the New Society of Water-Colour Painters. Its goal was to provide exhibition venues for watercolorists outside the annual events at the Royal Academy, which had become too limited. As Gilbert Richard Redgrave explained in his 1905 history of watercolor painting:
 
            “The available space at the Royal Academy for water-colour
            drawings still remained a very limited one, and as the artists outside the ranks of the society grew in numbers and gained in influence, a time arrived when the provision of another gallery seemed to have become a matter of imperative necessity. A meeting of artists was convened and steps were taken to form a new society, " not necessarily," as we are told, " in rivalry and opposition to the existing body, but in the interests of their own art, as essential to the sale of their pictures, and indeed in self defence." [ii]
 
Jutsum participated in the Association for five years, working consistently in watercolor and exhibiting at the gallery at No. 38 Pall Mall. For an artist without other sources of financial support, watercolors offered several advantages. First, it was less expensive in terms of supplies, as well as an easily portable medium for a landscape painter who was often on the road in search of motifs. During the 1840s, Jutsum’s documented painting expeditions included trips to Devonshire and the Scottish Highlands, and it is likely that he traveled elsewhere in Britain as well. Second, watercolors were affordable to a larger market of potential buyers, which meant that a middle-class client who would not be able to purchase an oil painting might be tempted by a watercolor.
 
After 1847, Jutsum returned to oil painting as his primary mode of expression. Again, there has been no research on the reason for this change of heart, but there is documentation of his participation in the 1851 exhibition at the Royal Academy, where he displayed Devonshire Coast, an oil painting that attracted positive critical attention. Perhaps Jutsum’s painting had become sufficiently marketable to provide him with a comfortable income. His popularity with collectors is also suggested by a hand-colored engraving of an earlier work, The Noon-day Walk that was published in The Art Journal in 1858. 
 
Jutsum’s achievements as an artist also allowed him to purchase a home in St. John’s Wood, one of London’s earliest suburbs. Developed in the 1820s as a residential district for “villa” housing, it was a very fashionable address, and a certain indicator that Jutsum was quite affluent by the 1850s. A carte-de-visite from the 1860s confirms this impression with an image of a well-dressed man seated comfortably in an elegant armchair. Henry Jutsum died in St. John’s Wood on 3 March 1869 at age 53.
 
                                                                                                Janet Whitmore, Ph.D.
 
Selected Museums
Government Art Collection, Department for Culture, Media and Sport, UK
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Worcester City Museums, UK
 
 
[i] Patrick Noon, Crossing the Channel: British and French Painting in the Age of Romanticism, (London: The Minneapolis Institute of Arts in association with Tate Publishing, 2003), 197.
 
[ii] Gilbert Richard Redgrave, A History of Water-Colour Painting in England
‘Published under the direction of the General Literature Committee’ (London, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1905), 171-172.
Born in Greenwich, England in 1852, Alfred de Bréanski (the elder) was the oldest son in a Polish immigrant family. Although his father Leopold’s occupation is not recorded, two other siblings, Gustave and Julie, also became painters, thus suggesting that the family business may have been related to the visual arts. Certainly the young de Bréanski completed his training quickly, and made his debut at the Royal Academy in 1872 with Evening: Softly falls the even light, a landscape that was immediately purchased by the Bishop of Peterborough. 
 
By the 1870s, de Bréanski had already embraced landscape painting as his preferred subject matter. He traveled to the isolated regions of Wales and Scotland in search of wilderness landscapes, creating a unique blend of romanticism and realism. In a work such as The River Colwyn, North Wales from 1872, for example, the artist has presented a panoramic view of the rugged Welsh mountains surrounding the river, but he also concentrates on the texture in the grass and rock as well as the flickering light on the water and clouds. The meteorological accuracy of the sky alone would suggest the influence of John Constable, and certainly the work of both Constable and J. M. W. Turner would have been inspiring for any promising landscape painter in Britain at the time. However, these two extraordinary predecessors were also overwhelming; their contributions to the development of landscape painting was undisputed, and their work provided the stimulus for several generations to come—both in England and on the continent. As de Bréanski went about the process of establishing his own career, he sought to find his own expression within the broadly defined boundaries established by his aesthetic forebears.
 
Like his Realist colleagues in France, he was fascinated by the texture of rock and earth and foliage, focusing attention on the minute details of a particular plant or craggy outcropping. In contrast, however, he remained firmly committed to the importance of a romantic pantheism in which the natural world itself encourages spiritual reflections, albeit not necessarily religious lessons. The undated Highland Loch with Angler and Cattle illustrates this point; the impressively detailed Highlands are swathed with clouds that seem to change even as the viewer observes the scene, progressing from sunlit white puffs to low-lying streaks of charcoal that threaten to drop rain at any moment. At the lake below, the cattle continue to drink despite the impending storm while the fisherman watches calmly from shore. Further, the range of color—and the juxtaposition of pure colors—hints that de Bréanski may have been aware of Impressionist color experiments. Yet the image is moody and subjective, akin to the English Romantic painters of the early nineteenth century who sought out landscapes untouched by industrialization.
 
In 1873, just after his Royal Academy debut, de Bréanski married Annie Roberts, a Welsh painter in her own right, whom he met on his travels through Wales. Predictably, almost nothing is known about Roberts’ artwork, although she undoubtedly supported her husband’s efforts whole-heartedly. They raised a family of seven children, including Alfred, Jr. and Arthur who also became painters. The family connection to Wales, as well as his affection for the rugged landscapes he found there, encouraged de Bréanski to exhibit his work at the Royal Cambrian Academy in addition to his London venues. He was not alone in his enthusiasm for the mountainous region of North Wales, and by 1881 a group of artists banded together to form a new “academy” where they could exhibit their work and promote the visual arts in Wales. Queen Victoria officially recognized the group in 1882, thus adding “royal” to the organization’s name. Over the next twenty years, the Royal Cambrian Academy expanded its exhibition schedule, as well as its membership, eventually settling in Conwy where it remains today.
 
Back in London, de Bréanski routinely showed his painting at both the Royal Academy and the Royal Society of British Artists, an alternative group chartered in 1887. He also exhibited with the Royal Institute of Oil Painters, founded in 1882. As its name implies, the only artwork on display here was oil painting, but the organization attracted a variety of artists at its annual exhibitions, including de Bréanski’s contemporaries, Lawrence Alma-Tadema and Walter Sickert as well as the French artists, Henri Fantin-Latour and Auguste Rodin.
 
With his career well established by the 1880s, de Bréanski settled into life in the eastern suburbs of London, and continued to travel regularly to Scotland and Wales, developing his own unique expression of these still remote locales. Less well known are de Bréanski’s landscapes of the Thames River where he kept a houseboat. His 1881 painting, Henley Regatta, offers a modernist perspective on this traditional five-day rowing competition, again with strong suggestions that he was very much aware of the painting then current in Paris. Like the boating images of Gustave Caillebotte, Claude Monet or Mary Cassatt, this composition positions the viewer above the action—perhaps on a bridge—where the foreground is cut off as it might have been in a photograph. Similarly, the use of unadulterated colors, and the play of flickering light on the water mirror the techniques that Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir pioneered at La Grenouille in 1869. Despite the lack of recorded documentation of trips to Paris, de Bréanski’s work evidences detailed knowledge of the Impressionist’s work, a fact that only underscores his wide-ranging awareness of the aesthetic innovations in the late nineteenth century. 
 
Both prolific and distinguished, de Bréanski exhibited at the Royal Academy until 1918 when he seems to have retired from public life. He died ten years later in London at age 66.
        
                                                                 Janet Whitmore, Ph.D.
 
 
 
Selected Museums
 
Brighton and Hove Museums, Brighton, UK
Southhampton City Art Gallery, Southhampton, UK
Tyne and Wear Museums, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK
Emile Auguste Hublin was born and raised in Angers, the historical capitol of the region known as Anjou in northwestern France. Located adjacent to the Loire valley, Angers had long been an important market town, as well as a center of education and culture. The young Hublin would have had abundant opportunities to study a remarkable range of art—from Louis I of Anjou’s famous medieval Apocalypse tapestries to the art collection at the Musée des Beaux-Arts. The museum, created at the end of the eighteenth century in the wake of the French Revolution, would have been a particularly important resource for an aspiring painter living far from the riches of Parisian collections. 
 
Born on 2 July 1830, Hublin began life just a month before the “citizen king,” Louis-Philippe, took control of France in the July Revolution. The new monarch proclaimed his intent of maintaining a “juste milieu”, a middle-of-the-road course that would serve the people while maintaining a constitutional form of monarchy. In Paris, this proved to be a tumultuous period as royalist and republican factions strove for ultimate control. In Angers, however, the life of this primarily agricultural center remained relatively untouched by political upheaval. Hublin seems to have spent his youth pursuing his studies in the local schools before leaving for Paris in the late 1840s or early 1850s. 
 
The exact date of his arrival in Paris is obscured by the revolution of 1848 when Louis-Philippe was forced to abdicate by the republican socialist coalition that established the Second Republic. Whether or not Hublin was in the military at this time remains unknown, although it would have been the standard practice for young men to perform their obligatory military service in their late teens or early twenties. What is known is that Hublin entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts on 6 April 1855 at age 24. By this time, the short-lived Second Republic had been overthrown by Napoleon III, who then established the relatively stable Second Empire.
 
At the Ecole, Hublin studied under the direction of the elderly François-Edouard Picot, a neoclassical painter who had worked with Jacques-Louis David. Picot’s neoclassical approach had not only received numerous honors, but had also attracted many of the students who would become the leading academic painters of the next generation, including William Adolphe Bouguereau, Alexandre Cabanel and Jean-Jacques Henner. Hublin made his Salon debut in 1861 and continued to exhibit there until at least 1880.
 
The influence of neoclassicism is clearly evident in Hublin’s work, harking back to the sculptural forms of Jacques-Louis David more thoroughly than most of his contemporaries. A painting such as Le Goûter from 1870, for example, depicts a conventional genre scene of a lovely young woman feeding a dove, but Hublin’s composition is grounded in the late portraiture of David. The opaque background creates a flat plane beyond which the viewer’s eye cannot see; the girl’s adolescent body is both idealized and substantial as if it was based on ancient Roman sculpture; and the color palette is subdued in order to focus attention on the interaction between the figure and the gentle bird which has settled on her skirt. This style of painting will become Hublin’s hallmark, distinguishing him from colleagues who embraced the fashionably insubstantial depiction of the human body.
 
Beginning in the 1870s, Hublin seems to have traveled frequently to Brittany—or perhaps back home to Angers with occasional painting trips to nearby Brittany. His 1872 painting of Two Beggar Girls from Quimperle testifies to his interest in the region, and to his appreciation of the local customs—and costumes—of the residents of this small medieval town. Like so many others, from Dagnan-Bouveret to Gauguin, Hublin hoped to record the vanishing world of rural life in the face of ever-expanding industrialization; Brittany seemed to offer an enclave that retained its deep rural roots.
 
Other paintings, such as The Lonely Maid, 1873, or A Friend in Need, 1879, spotlight young peasant women staring pensively out at the viewer or into the distance. Again, the figures are fully three-dimensional in form, a direct contrast to the increasingly disembodied females that were favored in the academic salons at this time. Likewise, the costumes are more akin to the ragtag clothing of Courbet’s Stonebreakers than the prettified peasant garb of Jules Breton. Hublin’s work is thus an unusual blend of neoclassicism, mid-century realism, and academic tradition. 
 
Nonetheless, he was a successful academic painter, with regular exposure at the annual Salon exhibitions, and a thriving market for his work. His images of young peasant women were undoubtedly sold in the growing number of commercial galleries in Paris, and perhaps also in London. He seems to have been particularly popular with British collectors, where the auction records for his paintings show a steady increase in price throughout the twentieth century. 
 
Like so much else about Emile Auguste Hublin, information about the exact date of his death is uncertain, but it seems to have occurred around 1891.
 
                                                            Janet Whitmore, Ph.D.
 
 
 
Selected Museums
New Walk Museum and Art Gallery, Leicester, UK
Born on 21 January 1848 in Paris, Henri Biva came from a family of painters, and like his kinsmen, Paul and Lucien Biva, he learned the technique of genre painting early in life. The artistic environment of Biva’s early years was dominated by the rise of the Realists and the belated public recognition of the Barbizon painters in the official halls of the Salon. Biva himself arrived at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1873, at age 25, somewhat later than was typical. Given his modest family background, it is entirely possible that his delayed art education was the result of having performed his military service during his early 20s—and more significantly, during the difficult years of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71.
 
At the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Biva’s studies were directed by Léon Tanzi, a respected genre painter, as well as by the landscape artist, Alexandre Nozal. The influence of both instructors is visible in Biva’s work, but it is clearly Nozal who ultimately steered the young artist into a career as a painter of the natural world. Beginning in the late 1870s, Biva exhibited oil paintings of water features and flower arrangements at the Salon, enjoying sufficient commercial success to make his living. Images such as The Waterfall illustrate why his work was popular; it is a carefully detailed and richly textured painting of a small cascade tumbling into a forest stream. Like the naturalist painters such as Jules Bastien-Lepage or Rosa Bonheur, there is a strong tactile quality to Biva’s work, focused on the shapes, colors and forms of the small plants beside the stream or the smooth grey surface of the tree trunks. 
 
Equally important in the nineteenth-century marketplace, this type of landscape painting offered an intimate glimpse of a specific locale, a reminder of days spent in the French countryside, or perhaps at the immense forest preserves surrounding Paris. Unlike contemporaries such as Pissarro or Monet, Biva’s landscapes suggest a time before industrialization when no railroad or factory disrupted rural vistas. Rather, these images show no evidence of human activity at all except for the occasional fisherman drowsing by the riverside. 
 
In 1886 Biva also exhibited three works at the newly organized Exposition Internationale de Blanc et Noir, an exhibition that reflected the growing enthusiasm for graphic works of art in many media. As art historian Alison McQueen notes,  “In a sequence of four displays in 1886, 1888, 1890 and 1892, these exhibitions grew from installations in the Salle des Etats at the Louvre to more ambitious expositions in one of the Palais on the Champs-Elysées.” [i] Biva’s contribution to the 1886 display included Street in Ville d’Avray, Night, Roses in Nice, and Gillyflowers. Although the medium for these works remains unknown, it is likely that they were either watercolors or pastels, formats that Biva used throughout his career. The expanding interest in graphic formats related directly to the increase in the number of middle-class collectors who sought to display sophisticated artwork in their homes, but who could not afford the more expensive paintings available at commercial galleries. For an artist just beginning to establish a reputation, such as Biva, the Exposition Internationale de Blanc et Noir was an ideal venue to nurture potential clients and develop a public presence.
 
Although Biva’s career seems to have flourished during the 1880s, he received particular acclaim in the 1890s beginning with his first honorable mention at the Salon des Artistes Français in 1892 when his work as a painter of landscapes and flowers was especially noted. Three years later, in 1895, he received a third class medal, and in 1896, a second class medal. With this third award in place, he was no longer obligated to submit his work to the annual jury for acceptance, but instead was guaranteed an automatic position at the Salon.
 
The turn of the century brought Biva continued success and public renown. His landscapes and flower paintings, still widely sought after by art collectors, gradually evolved into more meditative images. At first glance, a painting like By the River appears to be a serene landscape featuring a calm stream edged by sunlit grasses. Closer inspection, however, reveals that Biva has framed the composition with dark green overhanging trees that direct the viewer’s attention to the bright splotch of water in the distance, skipping over the small figure of the fisherman seated on the river’s bank. Combined with the uncanny stillness of the image, Biva suggests a Symbolist tone here, eliciting a mood of somber reverie within a sunny, but slightly claustrophobic, glade.
 
Similarly, his twentieth century flower paintings are also Symbolist images. Like his kinsman Paul’s still-lifes, Biva’s work from this time period seems almost disembodied. For example, baskets of glowing roses emerge from undefined backgrounds, lit from within, but without any indication of the setting. Surely, the floating flower forms of an artist like Odilon Redon must have offered inspiration for this type of image in Biva’s work.
 
In 1900 Biva received a bronze medal at the annual Salon, and was also elected a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. This crowning achievement seems to have stimulated still more commercial success in the years preceding World War I. Following the war years, Biva’s sales rebounded and, in fact, he was still exhibiting paintings at the 1928 Salon, the year of his death.
 
                                                            Janet Whitmore, Ph.D.
 
Selected Museums:
 
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen
Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts en Belgique, Brussels
 
[i] Alison McQueen, The Rise of the Cult of Rembrandt, Reinventing an Old Master in 19th-century France(Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2003), 279.
Born on 14 March 1836 in the small town of Tournan, Jules-Joseph Lefebvre grew up primarily in nearby Amiens where his father owned a bakery. Although he undoubtedly helped with the family business, the young Lefebvre’s artistic skills were evident at an early age. With his father’s support, he sought, and won, a five-year fellowship of 1000 francs annually from the City of Amiens. This enabled him to move to Paris in 1852 where he began his art education in the studio of Léon Cogniet, a neoclassical history painter. Although only 16 years old at the time, Lefebvre was soon admitted to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts under Cogniet’s auspices. Within three years, in 1855, he made his debut at the annual Paris Salon.
 
Lefebvre’s success at the Ecole encouraged him to pursue the coveted Prix de Rome, which would fund his study at the French Academy in Rome. His 1859 entry for the competition resulted in a second place award, but two years later, he won the prestigious first place prize with his painting of The Death of Priam. The subject, based on Homer’s Illiad, reflected the profound influence of Lefebvre’s academic training. During his five-year sojourn in Rome, he expanded his understanding of both classical Roman culture and the Italian masters of the Renaissance, and he began to focus increasing attention on painting female nudes. The early years in Rome seem to have been a particularly lively time as well; the other French students included Léon Bonnat, Carolus-Duran, Tony Robert-Fleury, Jean-Jacques Henner, Jean-Paul Laurens, and Albert Giraud as well as their professor Léon Cogniet. The friendships formed here would last a lifetime.
 
Unfortunately, Lefebvre’s years in Rome were disrupted by the death of his parents and one of his sisters. Not surprisingly, such a significant loss sent him into a debilitating depression. By the time he returned to Paris in 1867, however, he had come to terms with his grief, and began to concentrate on establishing a career as one of France’s leading painters. This new determination met with immediate success at the 1868 Salon where Reclining Nude received critical kudos; his two 1869 submissions, Diana awakening and Portrait of Alexandre Dumas, were equally well received. The culmination of this public acclaim occurred in 1870 when Lefebvre’s painting of La Vérité (Truth) attracted rave reviews from both the critics and the public. The model was the well-known actress, Sophie Croizette, who was painted in the nude holding the shining globe of “truth” above her head. Later that year, his artistic contribution was recognized with the Legion of Honor award. 
 
In light of the resounding triumph of La Vérité, Lefebvre continued to paint nude female figures, depicting Mary Magdalene (1876), Pandora (1877), Diana (1879), and Psyche (1883) and many others. Unlike William Bouguereau, his primary competitor in this arena, Lefebvre used a wide variety of models rather than just a few, a strategy that presumably broadened the potential audience for this type of painting. Lefebvre also solidified his reputation as a portrait painter during the 1870s, depicting both celebrities and wealthy bourgeois sitters. Over the course of forty years, he exhibited approximately 72 portraits at the Salon; such a prolific output not only ensured a continuing clientele, but also a consistent income.
 
Lefebvre’s contribution to the development of late nineteenth-century art also took the form of teaching. Beginning in 1870, he became a professor at the Académie Julian, founded in 1868 by Rodolphe Julian as an art school open to both women and men as well as to foreigners. The Académie Julian was especially important for women since they were not admitted to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts until 1897. As noted in the 1999 catalogue of the Dahesh Museum’s exhibition, Overcoming All Obstacles: The Women of the Académie Julian, the female students’ respect for Lefebvre was legendary. He was perceived as a mentor who could provide practical advice about succeeding in the world of galleries, dealers and salon exhibitions as well as more traditional instruction in art. [i]
 
Like all academically trained artists, Lefebvre emphasized the importance of drawing as the foundation for painting, and encouraged his students to hone their skills by constantly sketching from live models. A description of his own process from the Salon of 1894 might well be an echo of the directions he offered students. “Nothing in nature is ever exactly the same, not even two leaves from the same tree. Monsieur Lefebvre, taking this rule as his guiding principle, finds a fresh approach in every portrait he undertakes. For him, no one person resembles another. He varies his approach with every model according to the inspiration offered by the model.” [ii]
 
Following the horror of the Paris Commune in 1871, Lefebvre moved his studio to 5 Rue de la Bruyère at edge of Montmartre, not far from the Académie Julian. This location was also reasonably close to the elegant apartments—filled with fledgling art collectors—lining the grand boulevards constructed during Haussmann’s renovation of Paris in the 1860s. Lefebvre’s professional success only expanded during the last quarter of the century. In 1878, he received a First Class medal at the Salon, and in 1886, he won the Medal of Honor. At the extravaganza of the 1889 Exposition Universelle celebrating France’s centennial as a republic, he won the Grand Prix award. Two years later, at age 55, he was named a member of the Institut de France, the governing body of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. As John Milner noted in The Studios of Paris, appointment to the Institut was reserved for only fourteen painters, whose responsibility was to ensure a level of professionalism “which militated against amateurism.” [iii] From his unpretentious origins as a baker’s son, Lefebvre achieved unimagined success as a painter. His career was crowned in 1898 when he was named a commandeur of the Legion of Honor. He died in Paris on 25 Feburary 1911 at age 78.
                                                                          Janet Whitmore, Ph.D.
 
Selected Museum Collections:
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Harvard University Art Museum
Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
Joslyn Art Museum, Lincoln, Nebraska
Musée d’Amiens
Musée de Lyon
Musée d’Orsay
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires
 
 
[i] Jane Becker and Gabriel P. Weisberg, editors. Overcoming All Obstacles: The Women of the Académie Julian. (New York; Dahesh Museum, 1999), 38-39.
 
[ii] Gustave Haller. Le Salon, Dix ans de peinture Salon de 1894. (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1902). 173.
 
[iii] John Milner. The Studios of Paris: The Capital of Art in the Late Nineteenth Century. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988). 9.
Jean Ferdinand Monchablon was born in the Vosges region of northeastern France in the village of Châtillon-sur-Sâone. Although modest in size today, Châtillon-sur-Sâone has an impressive history of settlement dating back to the Neolithic period. Its location at the confluence of the Sâone and Apance rivers, and at the junction between the provinces of Champagne, Franche-Comté and Lorraine has historically made this tiny village a crossroads of conflict, most recently between France and Germany. Hence, Jean Ferdinand Monchablon was also known as Jan, the more Germanic form of his name. Born on 6 September 1854, young Jean’s family apparently moved to the Breton city of Nantes while he was still in elementary school; there he won a Writing Prize at the school of Notre Dame de Nantes.
 
Monchablon’s academic skills were sufficiently notable that he was teaching at a college in Quimper, Brittany by 1875 at the age of 19. It was here too that he met his future wife, Fanny Elisa Julien, a talented pianist. However, his interest in painting eventually took him to Paris and to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts where he studied first with Jean Paul Laurens, a fiercely anti-clerical and republican academic, and then with Alexandre Cabanel from 1883-84. In spite of this training in the studios of two such committed Academicians, Monchablon’s primary interest lay in landscape painting.
 
Beginning in 1881, Monchablon exhibited successfully—and consistently—at the annual Salon. His early landscapes, such as Forest at Châtillon-sur-Sâone of 1885 (which is signed Jan Monchablon), are an intriguing blend of almost photographic realism with rather startling Impressionist light. The combination of these elements produced an image that is very immediate and tangible, but also somewhat meditative. During these early years of his career, Monchablon painted primarily in the countryside surrounding Paris, absorbing the scenes that he no doubt knew from the paintings of both the Barbizon School of the 1830-1860s and the more contemporary Impressionists. However, like other artists of his generation, Monchablon ultimately chose to focus on the landscape of his native region rather than embrace the peripatetic life of Corot or Daubigny. 
 
After many years of regular visits to his hometown in search of landscape motifs, Monchablon solidified his commitment to Châtillon in 1886 by signing a ten-year lease on property there, and moving his family from Paris to the country. Like so many others in this wine-growing region, he planted a vineyard to help defray expenses, and seems to have settled quite comfortably back into village life. On painting expeditions throughout the region, Monchablon devoted himself to capturing the characteristic landscape of the Sâone river valley. In images such as River Landscape with a Figure, we see a solitary woman strolling by the riverbank under an exquisitely blue summer sky; like many of Monchablon’s paintings, there is a stillness here, almost a sense of reverie or personal reflection. The model for the female figure was most likely his wife Fanny. In other works, such as Village with River and Cows, the models are known to be local villagers who were happy to sit by the river fishing while Monsieur Monchablon sketched them.
 
Monchablon’s move to Châtillon was a success. In 1889, he received a Silver Medal at the Exposition Universelle, and his work was consistently well received by both Paris critics and the public. At the Salon of 1895, Arbres en fleurs [Flowering Trees] was particularly cited as “pouring forth perfume” while Champs de blé [Fields of Wheat] was noted for its “strong brushwork and beautiful tonality.” [i] Success with his landscape paintings did not preclude accepting commissions for occasional portraits however. In 1896 and again in 1897, Monchablon exhibited a portrait at the Salon. The 1896 portrait of Monseigneur Turinaz was almost guaranteed to be a success in Paris, as it depicted the patriotic bishop giving a rallying speech on the anniversary of the Battle of Gravelotte, (a decisive victory for the Prussians in August 1870) flanked by two beautiful young women representing the lost provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. [ii] The emotional fervor associated with the loss of Alsace and Lorraine ran very high in the 1890s; and Monchablon’s position as a native of Lorraine made his portrayal of this event all the more stirring.
 
The turn of the century brought an additional honors in the form of another Silver Medal at the Exposition Universelle in 1900 and a Third Class medal at his last Salon exhibition in 1904. Simultaneously, Monchablon continued to develop the landscape images that are at the core of his work, emphasizing the luminous skies above the Sâone river, and the rich fields of the surrounding countryside. Following his death in 1904, Monchablon was posthumously admitted to the Legion of Honor in 1905.
 
                                              Janet Whitmore, Ph.D.
 
 
Selected museum collections:
Haggin Museum, Stockton, California
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Amiens, France
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Arras, France
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nancy, France
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes, France
Musée de Châtillon, Châtillon-sur-Sâone, France
 
 
[i] Gustave Haller. Le Salon, Dix ans de peinture Salon de 1895. (Paris: Calmann-Lévy,1902). 228.
 
[ii] Gustave Haller. Le Salon, Dix ans de peinture Salon de 1896. (Paris: Calmann-Lévy,1902). 347.
Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier had one of the more remarkable artistic careers in nineteenth century France. Although largely self-taught, he became the highest paid painter in the second half of the century, an accomplishment that stems from persistence, congeniality, and the capacity to understand both the strengths and limitations of his work. Meissonier was born in Lyon on 21 February 1815, just as the Napoleonic era was coming to a close. His father, a dye merchant, moved the family to Paris three years later. By the early 1830s, Meissonier’s natural inclination for art led him to study very briefly with Jules Potier, and then with Léon Cogniet for a period of five months. His primary teachers, however, were the seventeenth and eighteenth century Dutch, Flemish and French painters at the Louvre, particularly the still life and genre painters.
 
It comes as no surprise, then, that Meissonier’s first submission to the Salon, in 1834, was a small painting called Flemish Burghers which was essentially a costume piece featuring three sober-looking gentlemen clad in traditional seventeenth century clothing. The play of light and shadow, as well as the delicately rendered tabletop still life, echoed the works of painters such as Gerard Dou or Gabriel Metsu, whose paintings were attracting increasing attention from a new generation of still life artists. In addition, Flemish Burghers appealed to the bourgeois taste for historical costume dramas. The critical and popular acclaim was overwhelming; the Société des Amis des Arts purchased the work for 100 francs, and Meissonier’s career was launched before he reached the age of 20.
 
Despite this early success, Meisonnier’s painting did not bring immediate financial security. Rather, his primary source of reliable income in these years was the design of wood engravings for book illustrations. Today, books such as Léon Curmer’s edition of J-H. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s Paul et Virginie (Paris 1838) are sought after precisely because of those illustrations. 
 
Meissonier’s persistence in submitting work to the annual Salon also proved to be a smart choice. With the triumph of Flemish Burghers in 1834, the young artist realized that his skill in creating evocative—and precisely detailed—historical genre images had the potential to become a solid base for his career. Pursuing that strategy, he exhibited Chess Players: Flemish Subject and The Little Messenger at the Salon of 1836; A Reader in 1840; and another Chess Player in 1841, for which he won a second-class medal. 
 
The defining year, however, was 1842 when he exhibited Smoker and The Bass Player, which attracted glowing commentary from the art critic and poet, Théophile Gautier. “In their small scale, we place these inestimable works without hesitation beside those of Metsu, Gerald Dou, and Mieris; perhaps even above them, because Meissonier has the truth of drawing, the fineness of tone and preciousness of touch joined with a quality that the Dutch hardly possess—style.” [i] With such acclaim, Meissonier became the most sought-after painter of the decade, appealing to a wide range of collectors. His prices rose concomitantly, and by 1847, he was able to purchase an elegant suburban home in Poissy—a noteworthy accomplishment for a self-taught, 32-year-old artist who had neither social connections nor high-placed supporters when he began.
 
Both social and cultural customs changed radically in 1848 when revolution swept through Europe. In Paris, the “citizen king”, Louis-Philippe was forced to abdicate in February, leaving the country awash in civil strife. As a captain in the National Guard, Meissonier led the troops responsible for defending the Hôtel de Ville; and there he witnessed the carnage first hand. In part, his response was to paint one of his most significant images: Memory of the Civil War (The Barricades), an unflinching depiction of the incomprehensible horror of civil war. Piles of bodies lie in the claustrophobic street in varying stages of decomposition –untended and unclaimed. Blue shirts and white shirts, all stained with blood, create a grim “tricolore” far removed from patriotic flag-waving. The painting was exhibited at the “Realist Salon” of 1850-51 where it received considerable attention, as much for the change it represented in the artist’s work as for the somber subject.  
 
Although relative peace returned to France as the Second Republic evolved into the Second Empire under Napoleon III, Meissonier remained focused on military subjects. Throughout the 1850s, he combined genre techniques with military themes such as ordinary soldiers going about daily routines, which found an eager market among the numerous French veterans. However, when critics at the Salon of 1857 complained that his work was repetitive, Meissonier began expanding his repertoire to include large history paintings. Clearly, this was a calculated risk: he had already received the Grand Medal of Honor at the Exposition Universelle in 1855, as well as imperial attention when Napoleon III purchased The Quarrel at the behest of Queen Victoria—who then presented it to Prince Albert. In addition, his private clientele was extensive and growing. Branching out into history painting—without the formal training that typically required—was to court an uncertain future.
 
Indeed, Meissonier’s initial foray into history painting, in his 1863 painting of Napoleon III at the Battle of Solférino was not well received. Perseverance again served him well however, as he redirected his attention to the romanticized military campaigns of Napoleon I, and received a warm reception at the 1864 Salon for 1814, The Campaign of France. The meticulous detailing of his earlier genre paintings was now magnified many times over in the large format, offering viewers a sense of immediacy in the image, but also requiring long hours of historical research and painstaking painting. 
 
By the time of the 1867 Exposition Universelle, where he showed fourteen works, Meissonier had established his reputation as a history painter as well as a genre painter. The prices he commanded were astonishing: The American collector, A. T. Stewart purchased Friedland, 1807 for an unprecedented 380,000 francs ($60,000) in 1875. [ii] Beginning in the 1870s, Meissonier was represented by the Georges Petit Gallery, who not only promoted his work among wealthy Americans such as William T. Walters of Baltimore and William Vanderbilt of New York, but also showcased his painting with frequent exhibitions. Of particular note was the May 1884 retrospective exhibition celebrating the 50th anniversary of Meissonier’s Salon debut in 1834; 146 examples of painting, sculpture and engraving were displayed.
 
In 1889 Meissonier accepted the position of president of the Exposition Universelle, France’s extravaganza celebration of the centennial of the Revolution—for which the Eiffel Tower was designed. For Meissonier at age 74, it undoubtedly brought recollections of his own journey through the politically and artistically turbulent decades. He exhibited nineteen paintings at the Expo and became the first artist to be awarded the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor. Unflagging in his commitment to the arts, he also helped to establish the independent Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts the following year, and became its first president for a brief period. Meissonier died in Paris on 31 January 1891 just 21 days before his 76th birthday. 
 
Two years later, in1893, the Georges Petit Gallery held a posthumous retrospective of his works.
 
                                              Janet Whitmore, Ph.D.
 
 
Selected Museums
 
Art Institute of Chicago
Ashmoleon Museum, Oxford University, UK
Cleveland Museum of Art
Dallas Museum of Art
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia
Indiana University Art Museum
Joslyn Art Museum, Lincoln, Nebraska
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Louvre, Paris
Manchester City Art Gallery, Manchester, UK
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Musée d’Orsay
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
National Gallery of Art, London
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C.
National Museums and Galleries of Wlaes
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Wallace Collection, London
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore
 
 
[i] Edmond Bonnaffé, “Un dossier de documents inédits pour servir à la biographie de Meissonier” Gazette des Beaux-Arts (August 1891), 128.
 
[ii] Eric Zafran, Cavaliers and Cardinals, Nineteenth-Century French Anecdotal Paintings, (Cincinnati: Taft Museum, 1992), 9.