Jean-Louis Ernest Meissonier online oil painting gallery

Jean-Louis Ernest Meissonier
French Romantic painter, printmaker, sculptor & colonel
born 21 February 1815 - died 1891

Student of: Léon Cogniet (1794-1880).
Teacher of: Jean Baptiste Edouard Detaille (1847-1912), Lucien Alphonse Gros (1845-1913), Daniel Ridgway Knight (1839-1924), Enrique Mélida y Alinari (1838-1892), Camillo Miola (1840-), Eduardo Zamacois y Zabala (1842-1871).
Influence on: Harry Willson Watrous (1857-1940).

Knight of: Légion d'Honneur (from 1846). - Jean-Louis Ernest Meissonier online oil painting gallery - Jean-Louis Ernest Meissonier oil painting gallery – online oil paintings Jean-Louis Ernest Meissonier Bio by oil paintings online gallery of France painting online gallery.


MEISSONIER, JEAN LOUIS ERNEST (1815—1891), French painter, was born at Lyons on the 21st of February 1815. From his schooldays Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier showed a taste for painting, to which some early sketches, dated 1823, bear witness. After being placed with a druggist, Jean-Louis Ernest Meissonier obtained leave from his parents to become an artist, and, owing to the recommendation of a painter named [Jules] Potier, himself a second class Prix de Rome, Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier was admitted to Leon Cogniet’s studio. He paid short visits to Rome and to Switzerland, and exhibited in the Salon of 1831 a picture then called Les Bourgeois Flamands (Dutch Burghers) but also known as The Visit to the Burgomaster, subsequently purchased by Sir Richard Wallace, in whose collection (at Hertford House, London) it is, with fifteen other examples of this painter. It was the first attempt in France in the particular genre which was destined to make Jean-Louis Ernest Meissonier famous microscopic painting—miniature in oils. Working hard for daily bread at illustrations for the publishers — Curmer, Hetze and Duboclier — Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier also exhibited at the Salon of 1836 the Chess Player and the Errand Boy. After some not very happy attempts at religious painting, Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier returned, under the influence of Chenavard, to the class of work he was born to excel in, and exhibited with much success the Game of Chess (1841), the Young Man playing the Cello (1842), The Painter in his Studio (1843), The Guard Room, the Young Man looking at Drawings, the Game of Piquet (1845), and the Game of Bowls — works which show the finish and certainty of his technique, and assured his success. After his Soldiers (1848) Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier began A Day in June, which was never finished, and exhibited A Smoker (1849) and Bravos (Les Bravi, 5852). In 1855 Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier touched the highest mark of his achievement with The Gamblers and The Quarrel (La Rixe), which was presented by Napoleon III, to the English Court. His triumph was sustained at the Salon of 1857, when Jean-Louis Ernest Meissonier exhibited nine pictures, and drawings; among them the Young Man of the Time of the Regency, The Painter, The Shoeing Smith, The Musician, and A Reading at Diderot’s. To the Salon of 1861 Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier sent The Emperor at Solferino, A Shoeing Smith, A Musician, A Painter, and M. Louis Fould; to that of 1864 another version of The Emperor at Solferino, and 1814. Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier subsequently exhibited A Gamblers’ Quarrel (1865), and Desaix and the Army of the Rhine (1867). Meissonier worked with elaborate care and a scrupulous observation of nature. Some of his works, as for instance his 1807, remained ten years in course of execution. To the great Exhibition of 1878 Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier contributed sixteen pictures: the portrait of Alexandre Dumas which had been seen at the Salon of 1877, Cuirassiers of 1805, A Venetian Painter, Moreau and his Staff before Hobenlinden, a Portrait of a Lady the Road to La Salice, The Two Friends, The Outpost of the Grand Guard, A Scout, and Dictating his Memoirs. Thenceforward Jean-Louis Ernest Meissonier exhibited less in the Salons, and sent his work to smaller exhibitions. Being chosen president of the Great National Exhibition in 1883, Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier was represented there by such works as The Pioneer, The Army of the Rhine, The Arrival of the Guests, and Saint Mark. On the 24th of May 1884 an exhibition was opened at the Petit Gallery of Meissonier’s collected works, including 146 examples.

The titles of oil painting old master Jean-Louis Ernest Meissonier