| Biography of old oil painting master Pascal-Adolphe-Jean Dagnan-Bouveret what we can copy |
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Pascal-Adolphe-Jean
Dagnan-Bouveret
French Naturalist painter & printmaker
born 1852 - died 1929
Student of:
Alexandre Cabanel (1823-1889),
Jean-Baptiste-Camille
Corot (1796-1875),
Jean-Léon Gérôme
(1824-1904). |
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As the dean of the
nineteenth century academic naturalist
tradition, and a painter who sponsored a
fervent anti-modernist stance during his
life-time, Pascal Adolphe Jean
Dagnan-Bouveret, has been steadily coming
back into public consciousness over the past
fifteen years. Collectors have been drawn to
the originality of his conceptions, the
meticulousness of his style, and his ability
to continue working in an academic mode well
into the twentieth century in defiance of
the modernist viewpoint. Clearly,
Dagnan-Bouveret had a personal vision and
this was at variance with the constant flux
and change advocated by modernism.
Pascal-Adolphe-Jean Dagnan-Bouveret, was
born in Paris on January 7, 1852 and Pascal
Adolphe Jean Dagnan Bouveret died
in Quincey, Haute-Saône on July 3d, 1929.
Since his father, a tailor and businessman,
left France in order to start a new life in
Brazil, Dagnan-Bouveret was raised in Melun
by his maternal grandfather Gabriel Bouveret,
whose name Pascal Adolphe Jean Dagnan
Bouveret added to his own in
recognition of the care Pascal Adolphe Jean
Dagnan Bouveret received from
him. Dagnan-Bouveret was trained at the
Ecole des Beaux-Arts (beginning in 1869) in
the ateliers of
Alexandre Cabanel
and then
Jean-Léon Gérôme;
the latter's teaching remained the most
dominant influence on Dagnan's work. One
other artist, and a slightly older
colleague, whose work had an impact on
Dagnan's was the painter
Jules Bastien-Lepage
(1848-1884), who taught Dagnan the
significance of using rural life as a
contemporary theme.
Although Dagnan was a Parisian who kept an
atelier in Neuilly (just outside Paris) for
most of his career, Pascal Adolphe Jean
Dagnan Bouveret married into a Franc-Comtois
family. Pascal Adolphe Jean Dagnan Bouveret is always mentioned among a group
of Franc-Comtois artists including
Gustave Courtois
(1852-1923) (a cousin of his wife),
Louis Girardot
(1856-1933), and
Jules-Alexis Muenier
(1863-1942) all of whom had been students of
J.L. Gérôme,
a painter who was also from the same general
region of France. As a
naturalist/regionalist Dagnan established
his reputation with compositions
representing the rural life of the
Franche-Comté and of Brittany. These
paintings made him one of the most respected
members of an international naturalist
circle that allowed Dagnan to have a very
strong influence over other painters,
working in a similar vein on the European
continent, in England, and in America. It is
only later in his career, first in the mid
1880s and then more dramatically in the
1890s, that Dagnan turned to religious
themes. These became increasingly more
visionary and supernatural during the early
years of the 20th century. Spiritual themes
reflected Dagnan's determined turn toward
religious revivalism, a genre that obsessed
many painters in the 1890s; it also
reflected the powerful influence of his wife
whose own devout Catholicism was influential
in moving Dagnan toward some of his
religious themes. Dagnan's spiritual
paintings found strong support in the
atmosphere of the Catholic Revival in
France; his paintings such as the mystical
Supper at Emmaus and the Consolatrix
Afflictorum (Frick Art & Historical Center,
Pittsburgh), among others, were exhibited in
a separate location at the Paris World's
Fair of 1900 at a moment when Dagnan's work
was highly praised by the establishment. His
paintings were also well recognized in the
United States as they were reproduced in
American periodicals, and collected by such
independent tastemakers as George Baker,
Mrs. Potter Palmer, and Henry Clay Frick.
Dagnan was also a portraitist of talent and
in his later years Pascal Adolphe Jean
Dagnan Bouveret divided his activity
between portraits and religious scenes.
Pascal Adolphe Jean Dagnan Bouveret painted members of some of the best
established families of the Third Republic;
Pascal Adolphe Jean Dagnan Bouveret also did portraits of actresses (Mme.
Bartet) and military leaders (Maréchal Foch). |
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Dagnan exhibited at the Salon des Artistes
Français from 1877 (Atalante, Musée des
Beaux-Arts in Melun) until 1889; and in 1890
Pascal Adolphe Jean Dagnan Bouveret began exhibiting at the Salon of the
Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts where
Pascal Adolphe Jean Dagnan Bouveret was one of the founding members. His first
popular Salon success came with the
anecdotal genre painting Une noce chez le
photographe (1879) (Musée des Beaux-Arts,
Lyon), but the works which established
Dagnan-Bouveret's reputation are his
naturalist scenes inspired by life in the
Franche-Comté and Brittany including Un
accident (1880) in the Walters Art Gallery,
Baltimore, Chevaux à l'abreuvoir (1885)
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Chambéry, Le Pardon en
Bretagne (1887) at the Metropolitan Museum
of Art, Bretonnes au Pardon (1889) in Lisbon
in the Gulbenkian Collection, Le Concert
dans la forêt in the collections of the
Nancy Art Museum or Les Conscrits (1890)
(Paris, Assemblée Nationale). |
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The latter work reiterated the intense
nationalistic fervor of the period by
centering the activities of recruitment on
the strength and support of the rural areas
of France - locations that remained totally
behind the central government. The success
of these paintings in the 19th century and
the impact they still have for us today are
in great part due to the influ ence of
photography in their creation. As a student
of Gérôme, Dagnan-Bouveret with many of his
colleagues (Europeans and Americans) learned
how to use photography as a tool to arrive
at a more naturalistic, decidedly casual,
rendering for the scenes of daily life.
Dagnan-Bouveret was closely associated with
J.-A. Muenier, a painter who also maintained
a fervent interest in photography. Both men
traveled to the Near East (Algeria)
together, at the close of the 1880s
(1887-1888), where they actively
photographed numerous scenes in Algiers in
order to feed their developing interest in
orientalist themes. The photographic record
of their trip together provides an extensive
documentary foundation for seeing how these
artists were able to use this medium.
Understandably, Dagnan did not merely take
photographs so that Pascal Adolphe Jean
Dagnan Bouveret could copy them for
his paintings. Rather, Pascal Adolphe Jean
Dagnan Bouveret saw the new medium
of photography as a creative tool which,
when added to the academic tradition of
painstaking preparation of a given
composition, added significantly to the way
in which Dagnan-Bouveret could increase the
intricacy and exactitude of his compositions
while reinforcing the general interest in
reality.
Dagnan was also a pastellist and a member of
the Société des Pastellistes. In addition to
Paris and the European continent,
Dagnan-Bouveret's works were exhibited in
Chicago and in 1901 in a retrospective
exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago
and several times in Pittsburgh (Carnegie
Internationals) starting in 1896.
Dagnan-Bouveret was also a member of the
Foreign Advisory Committee for the Carnegie
International from 1897 until 1908.
In addition to the influence Dagnan-Bouveret
exerted on art students through his
exhibitions or when they came to his studio
in order to request his advice, Pascal
Adolphe Jean Dagnan Bouveret came in
contact with others at the Académie
Colarossi where Pascal Adolphe Jean Dagnan
Bouveret taught between 1885-1890
with G. Courtois. Dagnan-Bouveret received
numerous awards throughout his career. They
include: the second Prix de Rome in 1876, a
third class medal at the Salon in 1878, and
a first class medal in 1880. Pascal Adolphe
Jean Dagnan Bouveret received the
Legion of Honor in 1885 and the grade of
Officer in 1891. Other French awards include
the medal of honor from the Société des
Artistes Français and the Universal
Exposition in 1889, the medal and the Grand
Prix at the 1900 Universal Exposition.
Pascal Adolphe Jean Dagnan Bouveret became a member of the Institut de France in
1900. Foreign awards were also numerous.
Foreign medals include: a gold medal in
Munich and Ghent (1889), and a medal Hors
concours at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in
Chicago. His works have entered numerous
French and European public collections, in
addition to several north and south American
collections.
For example, in alphabetical order, his
works can be studied in Arras, Musée des
Beaux-Arts, in Baltimore at the Walters Art
Gallery, in Beauvais in the Musée de
Picardie, Besançon, Musée des Beaux-Arts,
Boston, Museum of Fine Arts. Chambéry, Musée
des Beaux-Arts, Cherbourg, Musée Thomas
Henri. Chicago, Chicago Art Institute, the
Cincinnati Art Museum, Dijon, |
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Musée des
Beaux-Arts and Musée Magnin, Glasgow, Art
Gallery & Museum,the Helsinki Ateneum, the
Montreal Art Museum, Mulhouse, Musée des
Beaux-Arts, at the Neue Pinakothek in
Munich, the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, the
Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, in
Paris at the Assemblée Nationale, the
Comédie Française, the Orsay Museum, the
Petit-Palais and the Sorbonne. Also in the
Philadelphia Museum of Art, in Pittsburgh at
the Carnegie Museum and the Frick Art &
Historical Center, in Quimper, Musée
Municipal, the church in Qincey (Haute-Saône),
St. Petersburg at the Hermitage, in the
Musée Georges Garret, Vesoul
(Franche-Comté), and in the Sterling &
Francine Clark Institute, Williamstown. |
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