Alexandre Cabanel
See also: Cabanel
Alexandre Cabanel (September 28th 1823 with Montpellier - January 23rd 1889 with Paris) is a painter French, considered as one of large the academic painters, or “firemen”, of the Second Empire, of which he is the artist more adulated.
Biography
Raise François-Edouard Picot with the École of the Art schools, he is second Prix of Rome in 1845 and spends five years to the Villa Médicis. The celebrity comes to him with the Naissance from Venus which is bought to him by Napoleon III in 1863. The same year, it is named professor at the School of the Art schools and it is elected member of the Académie of the Art schools. Between 1868 and 1888, it is 17 times member of the jury of the Salon, of which it receives the medal of honor in 1865, 1867 and 1878.At the same time painter of history, painter of kind and portraitist, it evolves/moves with the passing of years worms of the romantic topics, such Albaydé inspired by a poem of the Orientales of Victor Hugo. The European celebrities and the American collectors are ruent on its tables and portraits order to him. Enemy of the naturalists and the impressionist , in particular of Edouard Manet, it is brocardé by Emile Zola and all those which defend the emergence of an art less suave and more realistic.
Alexandre Cabanel had inter alia as pupils Benjamin-Constant Jean-Joseph, Albert Besnard, Vlaho Bukovac, Charles Bulteau, Gaston Bussière, Louis Capdevielle, Eugene Carrière, Fernand Cormon, Pierre Auguste Cot, Leon Couturier, Edouard Debate-Ponsan, Emile Friant, François Guiguet, Jules Bastien Lepage, François Flameng, Charles Fouqueray, Henri Gervex, Simó Gómez, Charles Lucien Léandre, Henri Sidaner, Aristide Maillol, Edouard-Antoine Marsal , Aime Morot, Fernand Peel of Cordova, Henri Regnault, Louis Royer, Jean-Jacques Scherrer, Joseph-Christmas Sylvestre, Paul Tavernier, Etienne Terrus, Adolphe Willette, Edmond Borchard, Jean-Eugene Buland.
Criticisms
Théophile Gautier in connection with Venus Birth:Its divine body seems Petri with the snow-covered scum of the waves. The points of the centres, the mouth and the cheeks are tinted of an unperceivable pink nuance; a drop of crimson ambroisienne is spread in this silver plated and vaporous substance. ” the Universal Monitor , June 13rd, 1863.
Louis Auvray in connection with Venus Birth:
(...) Venus Birth, of Mr. Cabanel, who charms and allures without exciting desires. What one admires here, it is the elegance of the forms, the correction of the drawing, the smoothness and the freshness of the color. It is less natural than '' the Pearl '' of Mr. Baudry; but it is more purely, more poetically beautiful; ” Exposure of the fine arts: living room of 1863 , 1863.
critical Emile Zola the same table, and puts forth a judgment on the painter:
See at Field-of-March the Venus Birth. The goddess drowned in a milk river, with the air of delicious a lorette, not in flesh and bone, - it would be indecent, - but in a kind of white and pink almond paste. There are people who find this adorable headstock drawn well, modelled well, and which declares it more or less bastard girl of Venus de Milo: here is the judgment of the serious people. There are people who are filled with wonder on the smile at the headstock, on his delicate members, his voluptuous attitude: here is the judgment of the light people. And all is for best in best tables of the world. ” Our painters at Field-of-March, 1867.
The principal mischievousness of Cabanel, it is to have renovated the academic style. With the old traditional headstock, made toothless and bald person, it made gift of false hair and false tooth. The shrew metamorphosed herself in a tempting, pommadée and scented woman, the mouth in heart and the loops fair. The painter has even a little thorough far the renovation. The female bodies on its fabrics became of cream. For roof of audacity, it went so far as to introduce tons and of the personal blows of brush. All is made deliberated matter, so that appears originality, but Cabanel never exceeds the terminals. It is a traditional genius which allows a face powder pinch, something like Venus in the dressing gown of a courtesan. Success was enormous. Everyone fell in extase. Here is a Master according to the taste of the decent people who claim themselves artists. You require the glare of the color? Cabanel gives it to you. You wish a drawing suave and animated? Cabanel finished some with the severe lines of the tradition. In a word, if you ask for originality, Cabanel is your man, this lucky fellow has of all in moderation, and it can be original with discretion. It does not form part of these exaggerated which exceeds measurement. There remains always suitable, he is always traditional despite everything, incompetent to too violently scandalize his public while deviating from the conventional ideal. ”Comment on the Exposure of 1875 .
- Emile Zola,