ROOM 19th CENTURY BAPTISMAL CHAPEL

Symbolist illustrator and decorator born in Chazelles-sur-Loire. He studied at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Lyon and Paris. Around 1890 he was influenced by Seurat and adopted his technique. In 1891 he became a disciple and then a collaborator of Puvis de Chabannes. He became closely related to Joseph Péladan, his Salon de la Rosicrucian and his esoteric environment, and illustrated the cover of his novel L’androgyne. From 1897 he exhibited at the Salon.

The greatest of the French Romantic painters, his use of colour influenced the development of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism.

Born in Charenton-Saint-Maurice, near Paris, Delacroix studied under the famous academic painter Pierre-Narcisse Guérin and admired Pieter Paul Rubens, Raphael, the Venetians, and his English contemporaries. Inspired by historical and contemporary events, as well as literature, he was a great reader and friend of famous writers. In 1825 the artist went to London and established a relationship with English painters; English literature also provided him with subjects. In 1831 he received the Legion of Honour; his most famous painting, Liberty Leading the People, was acquired by the State and exhibited in the Salon with great success.

In 1832 the painter travelled to Morocco accompanying the French ambassador; he discovered the Orient with its light and colours and the experience inspired exotic scenes for the rest of his life. In 1839Delacroix travelled to the Netherlands and studied Rubens in depth. For three decades, he executed numerous decorative works in official buildings and churches, while continuing to send works to the Salon.

Painter, illustrator, and draftsman. Granié was born in Toulouse and studied with Jules Garipuy at the École Supérieure des Beaux Arts of his hometown and later with Jean-Léon Gérôme in Paris; he exhibited in the official Salons from 1879 onwards. The artist is best known for his feminine portraits, tinged with Symbolism and characterized by their softness and restless sensuality, as well as the precision of drawing and a liking for mystery. Granié shows the influence of German and French Renaissance painters; the critic Louis Lacroix, who praises his talent as a draftsman and his particular technique, presents him as “the delayed disciple of Jean Clouet and the great French draftsmen of the 16th century”. The Musée d’Orsy keeps the portraits of the singer Yvette Guilbert (1895) and the actress Marguerite Moreno.

Born in Paris into a family dedicated to banking and business, Degas was one of the greatest draughtsmen of Western art, a master of the human figure in movement and a great colourist; he preferred pastel to other techniques. The artist studied under Louis Lamothe, a disciple of Ingres; he visited Italy and copied many works in Rome, Florence and Naples, but abandoned his ambition to become an academic history painter, and soon focused on contemporary subjects; his ballet dancers, jockeys and theatre groups are his most famous works. Degas exhibited with the Impressionists but remained at the edge of the group. The artist served in the artillery during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. In the 1880s, he began to work with pastel; his interiors with women bathing or working combine three-dimensionality and surface qualities. During the same period, he created sculptures, again depicting dancers and horses. Throughout the Dreyfus Affair, which divided France, Degas adopted an anti-Semitic stance. He regarded his human and animal models dispassionately, rejecting all Romanticism; it is not surprising that he was interested in photography. But his eyesight failed him more and more and in the end the artist became totally blind in one eye and nearly blind in the other.

Born in Namur (Belgium); painter and graphic artist. His first works were litographs for a satirical journal; around 1860 Rops went to Paris, where he worked in the studio of Henri-Alfred Jacquemart. Back in Brussels, the artist founded the Société Internationale des Aquafortistes. After 1874 he lived in Paris, became a friend of Charles Baudelaire and devoted himself mainly to illustrating books (by Gautier, Barbey d’Aurevilley, Voltaire, Mallarmé…). Rops joined the revolutionary art society of the XX, formed in Brussels in 1884. As a printmaker, his drypoint work marks him as one of the masters of the technique. As both a painter and a printmaker, he is known for his erotic and satanic subjects.

Born in Paris, he studied alongside Alexandre Cabanel, Pierre-Nicolas Brisset and Eugène Fromentin. He took on many decorative commissions for public buildings after having developed the mythological genre as a justification for nudity; in 1878, the Salon authorities excluded Rolla, which had become his most famous work, as it was considered immoral; it was subsequently exhibited and a very large audience came to see it. His works can be found at the Musée d’Orsay, the Boston, Los Angeles and Philadelphia museums, the National Gallery (Washington), the Cortauld Institute Gallery, and the Smithsonian Institution

Born in Leeds; in 1861 the painter left his job at the Great Northern Railway to dedicate himself to painting. Grimshaw became famous with his bleak views of piers and his night scenes of bare trees silhouetted alleys against the moonlight sky. In his early works, the influence of John Ruskin and the “fidelity to nature” is perceived; at the same time, he adopted the meticulous Prerraphaelite technique of another painter from Leeds, John William Inchbold. The artist was equally fascinated by the relatively new art of photography, and he may have used the camera obscura to develop his compositions. Grimshaw painted many urban scenes,with moonlight and shadow as the most characteristic features; he depicted towns and ports such as Glasgow, Liverpool, Leeds, Scarborough, Whitby, and London. Grimshaw also painted landscapes, portraits, interior scenes, fairy compositions, and neoclassical themes. In the last years of his life, he formed a deep friendship with James McNeill Whistler, who used to admire his work. He died in 1893 in his mansion Knostrop Old Hall, near Leeds. Several of his sons also dedicate themselves to painting. In the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza (Madrid) are housed several of his works.