Antoine Vollon
Encyclopedia
Antoine Vollon was a French
realist
artist, best known as a painter
of still life
s, landscape
s and figure
s. During his lifetime, Vollon was a successful celebrity
, enjoyed an excellent reputation, and was called a "painter's painter". In 2004, New York's then-PaceWildenstein
gallery suggested that his "place in the history of French painting has still not been properly assessed".
, France
. He taught himself to paint. He began an apprenticeship to an engraver
, and studied under Jehan Georges Vibert
at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts
in Lyon to become a printmaker
. He then worked at decorating enamel
led pans and stoves. In 1860 he and Marie-Fanny Boucher married and later had two children, Alexis and Marguerite.
, with the intention of becoming a painter. There he became a student of Théodule Ribot
and was influenced by Dutch
still life painters of the 17th century. He became friends with Alexandre Dumas, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux
, Honoré Daumier
and Charles-François Daubigny
. Vollon once described himself as a young artist "madly in love with painting".
for the Salon. Along the way, Vollon submitted a figure painting of a woman carrying a large basket on her back, Femme du Pollet à Dieppe (Seine-Inferieure), to the 1876 Salon, where it won first prize and received universally great reviews. Except Édouard Manet
unleashed a few words, in Bah! What is Vollon's Femme? A basket that walks which stigmatized it. According to Carol Forman Tabler, curator and professor of art who wrote her dissertation on Vollon, writing for Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide
:
Tabler describes his ambition and the decades-long strategies Vollon used to secure a place in history. After one year in the Salon des Refusés
in 1863, beginning in 1864 he exhibited his work at the Paris Salon. Vollon won a third-class medal in 1865, a second-class in 1868, and first-class in 1869. Vollon was a member of the Salon's jury for at least ten years starting in 1870.
He became a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1870 and eight years later, received the Officer's cross. He was elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts
in 1897. In 1900 he was awarded the Grand Prix at the Paris World's Fair
.
In July 1900 he had a stroke while painting at Versailles and later caught a fever. He died in August and is buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery
.
showed more than 70 works by Vollon in Manhattan in 2004. For The New York Times, a reviewer wrote, "Vollon smacks too much of other artists to be Truly Important, but his sensuous wallows in paint are well worth wider notice". But an earlier reviewer for the same newspaper quotes a critic writing in 1883, "He is, perhaps, the greatest painter living...."
His son Alexis Vollon (1865–1945) became a painter.
An intersection with a fountain in Lyon is named the Place Antoine Vollon. Two streets in France are named for him: Rue Antoine Vollon in Bessancourt and in Paris.
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
realist
Realism
Realism, Realist or Realistic are terms that describe any manifestation of philosophical realism, the belief that reality exists independently of observers, whether in philosophy itself or in the applied arts and sciences. In this broad sense it is frequently contrasted with Idealism.Realism in the...
artist, best known as a painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
of still life
Still life
A still life is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which may be either natural or man-made...
s, landscape
Landscape art
Landscape art is a term that covers the depiction of natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, and forests, and especially art where the main subject is a wide view, with its elements arranged into a coherent composition. In other works landscape backgrounds for figures can still...
s and figure
Figure painting
Figure painting is a form of the visual arts in which the artist uses a live model as the subject of a two-dimensional piece of artwork using paint as the medium. The live model can be either nude or partly or fully clothed and the painting is a representation of the full body of the model...
s. During his lifetime, Vollon was a successful celebrity
Celebrity
A celebrity, also referred to as a celeb in popular culture, is a person who has a prominent profile and commands a great degree of public fascination and influence in day-to-day media...
, enjoyed an excellent reputation, and was called a "painter's painter". In 2004, New York's then-PaceWildenstein
PaceWildenstein
The Pace Gallery is a contemporary and modern art gallery founded by Arne Glimcher in Boston 1960 as The Pace Gallery. The gallery moved to Manhattan in 1963 and from 1993 to 2010 operated jointly with Wildenstein & Co. as PaceWildenstein. There are three locations in Manhattan and one in...
gallery suggested that his "place in the history of French painting has still not been properly assessed".
Family and early years
Vollon was born the son of an ornamental craftsman in LyonLyon
Lyon , is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located at from Paris, from Marseille, from Geneva, from Turin, and from Barcelona. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais....
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
. He taught himself to paint. He began an apprenticeship to an engraver
Engraving
Engraving is the practice of incising a design on to a hard, usually flat surface, by cutting grooves into it. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an intaglio printing plate, of copper or another metal, for printing...
, and studied under Jehan Georges Vibert
Jehan Georges Vibert
Jehan Georges Vibert was a French academic painter.-Biography:He was born in Paris. He began his artistic training at a young age under the instruction of his maternal grandfather, engraver Jean-Pierre-Marie Jazet...
at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts
École des Beaux-Arts
École des Beaux-Arts refers to a number of influential art schools in France. The most famous is the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, now located on the left bank in Paris, across the Seine from the Louvre, in the 6th arrondissement. The school has a history spanning more than 350 years,...
in Lyon to become a printmaker
Printing
Printing is a process for reproducing text and image, typically with ink on paper using a printing press. It is often carried out as a large-scale industrial process, and is an essential part of publishing and transaction printing....
. He then worked at decorating enamel
Vitreous enamel
Vitreous enamel, also porcelain enamel in U.S. English, is a material made by fusing powdered glass to a substrate by firing, usually between 750 and 850 °C...
led pans and stoves. In 1860 he and Marie-Fanny Boucher married and later had two children, Alexis and Marguerite.
Paris and becoming a painter
In 1859 he moved to ParisParis
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, with the intention of becoming a painter. There he became a student of Théodule Ribot
Théodule Ribot
Théodule-Augustin Ribot was a French realist painter.He was born in Saint-Nicolas-d'Attez, and studied at the École des Arts et Métiers de Châlons before moving to Paris in 1845. There he found work decorating gilded frames for a mirror manufacturer; he also studied in the studio of...
and was influenced by Dutch
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
still life painters of the 17th century. He became friends with Alexandre Dumas, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux
Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux
Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux was a French sculptor and painter.Born in Valenciennes, Nord, son of a mason, his early studies were under François Rude. Carpeaux entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1844 and won the Prix de Rome in 1854, and moving to Rome to find inspiration, he there studied the works of...
, Honoré Daumier
Honoré Daumier
Honoré Daumier was a French printmaker, caricaturist, painter, and sculptor, whose many works offer commentary on social and political life in France in the 19th century....
and Charles-François Daubigny
Charles-François Daubigny
Charles-François Daubigny was one of the painters of the Barbizon school, and is considered an important precursor of Impressionism....
. Vollon once described himself as a young artist "madly in love with painting".
Figures and still lifes
He aspired to paint figures and not only still lifes which were the lowest acceptable genreGenre
Genre , Greek: genos, γένος) is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or culture, e.g. music, and in general, any type of discourse, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time...
for the Salon. Along the way, Vollon submitted a figure painting of a woman carrying a large basket on her back, Femme du Pollet à Dieppe (Seine-Inferieure), to the 1876 Salon, where it won first prize and received universally great reviews. Except Édouard Manet
Édouard Manet
Édouard Manet was a French painter. One of the first 19th-century artists to approach modern-life subjects, he was a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism....
unleashed a few words, in Bah! What is Vollon's Femme? A basket that walks which stigmatized it. According to Carol Forman Tabler, curator and professor of art who wrote her dissertation on Vollon, writing for Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide
Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art
The Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art was formed in 1993. International in its scope, the organization provides a means for scholars of nineteenth-century art from around the world to share ideas and resources through a variety of venues including conferences sessions, a...
:
Later years and awards
Carol Forman Tabler wrote:Tabler describes his ambition and the decades-long strategies Vollon used to secure a place in history. After one year in the Salon des Refusés
Salon des Refusés
The Salon des Refusés, French for “exhibition of rejects” , is generally an exhibition of works rejected by the jury of the official Paris Salon, but the term is most famously used to refer to the Salon des Refusés of 1863.-Background:...
in 1863, beginning in 1864 he exhibited his work at the Paris Salon. Vollon won a third-class medal in 1865, a second-class in 1868, and first-class in 1869. Vollon was a member of the Salon's jury for at least ten years starting in 1870.
He became a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1870 and eight years later, received the Officer's cross. He was elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts
Académie des beaux-arts
The Académie des Beaux-Arts is a French learned society. It is one of the five academies of the Institut de France.It was created in 1795 as the merger of the:* Académie de peinture et de sculpture...
in 1897. In 1900 he was awarded the Grand Prix at the Paris World's Fair
Exposition Universelle (1900)
The Exposition Universelle of 1900 was a world's fair held in Paris, France, from April 15 to November 12, 1900, to celebrate the achievements of the past century and to accelerate development into the next...
.
In July 1900 he had a stroke while painting at Versailles and later caught a fever. He died in August and is buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery
Père Lachaise Cemetery
Père Lachaise Cemetery is the largest cemetery in the city of Paris, France , though there are larger cemeteries in the city's suburbs.Père Lachaise is in the 20th arrondissement, and is reputed to be the world's most-visited cemetery, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors annually to the...
.
Legacy
WildensteinWildenstein & Company Building
The Wildenstein & Company Building is a Manhattan, New York edifice which stands at 19 East 64th Street, near Madison Avenue. It is five stories tall and was completed in early 1932. The building was designed in French 18th century style by Philadelphia, Pennsylvania architect Horace Trumbauer.Its...
showed more than 70 works by Vollon in Manhattan in 2004. For The New York Times, a reviewer wrote, "Vollon smacks too much of other artists to be Truly Important, but his sensuous wallows in paint are well worth wider notice". But an earlier reviewer for the same newspaper quotes a critic writing in 1883, "He is, perhaps, the greatest painter living...."
His son Alexis Vollon (1865–1945) became a painter.
An intersection with a fountain in Lyon is named the Place Antoine Vollon. Two streets in France are named for him: Rue Antoine Vollon in Bessancourt and in Paris.