Pierre-Georges Jeanniot
Encyclopedia
Pierre-Georges Jeanniot was a French
painter
, designer
, watercolorist, and engraver who was born in Geneva, Switzerland, and died in France.
, France. Nevertheless, Pierre-Georges Jeanniot started out pursuing a military career, as an infantry officer (1866-1881), but he never ceased drawing. He was known for the first time in 1872 at the art exhibition Salon de Paris, where he presented a watercolor painting called Intérieur de forêt. The next year he presented the painting Le Vernan à Nass-sous-Sainte-Anne. From then on he was a regular contributor to the Salon de Paris, where he presented new works with views of Toulouse, Paris, Troyes, the edges of the Seine, and some portraits.
In 1881, after the army offered him the rank of commandant, he resigned to devote himself exclusively to painting. He took up residence in Paris. His works from this period represent mainly scenes of military life that allowed him to forge a reputation. Jeanniot established himself permanently in 1882 and obtained his first award the following year (medal third class of the Salon de Paris) with his les Flanqueurs (1883, Musée du Luxembourg
). In 1886, La ligne de feu, souvenirs de la bataille de Rezonville, remembering the Battle of Mars-La-Tour
(Museum of Pau), assured his notoriety.
From then on, he started to show a certain artistic independence. He then mostly portrayed Parisian women during the "Belle Epoque", women in bathing suits on the beaches (a new phenomenon in those times) or scenes on the race course. These paintings give us a vivid sociological portrayal of his times. But as soon as the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts was founded in 1899, he rallied to their new painting trend.
In Paris, he secured himself friendships and memories of Edouard Manet
, Pierre Puvis of Chavannes, Jean-Louis Carnival, Paul Helleu, and especially with Edgar Degas
, whom he revered as a master. He spent much time with Edgar Degas in his family home in Diénay (Côte-d'Or
).
He was gifted with many talents and also excelled with his drawings. He showed in his drawings his passion and his artistic strength. They are vivacious, expressive and enthusiastic, while at the same time, rendering with a sense of humour the picturesque scenes of daily life. During the next decades he illustrated a large number of literary books, among them Le Voyage à Saint-Cloud, Germinie Lacerteux (1886), Contes choisis" (Guy de Maupassant
, 1886), Tartarin de Tarascon
(Daudet
, 1887), "Les Liaisons dangereuses" (Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
, 1917). He was also one of the illustrators of Les Misérables
(Victor Hugo
, 1887), La Débâcle et La Curée (Emile Zola
, 1893-1894), Le Calvaire (Octave Mirbeau
, 1901), Le Misanthrope (Molière
, 1907), Les Paysans (Honoré de Balzac
, 1911), and Candide (Voltaire
) and many more.
He was one of the first collaborators (together with Théodore de Banville
, Alphonse Daudet
and Joseph de Nittis) of the review La Vie Moderne and also contributed to the review La Lutte Moderne. In a later stage he became the director of Le Journal Amusant, while also offering contributions to Rire and L'Écho de Paris
.
As an engraver, he also sketches ironic scenes from the daily life depicting in lively traits the snobs of Paris. His talents suggest a resemblance to the works of Toulouse-Lautrec and Mary Cassatt
. At the same time he also used the woodcut
printing technique allowing vivid contrasts between dark and bright parts of the image.
His works can be found in many museums, though most are situated in France (Alais, Nancy, Paris, Carnavalet, Pau, Toul and Toulouse), but some in other countries (Oslo, New York, Buenos Aires).
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...
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...
, designer
Designer
A designer is a person who designs. More formally, a designer is an agent that "specifies the structural properties of a design object". In practice, anyone who creates tangible or intangible objects, such as consumer products, processes, laws, games and graphics, is referred to as a...
, watercolorist, and engraver who was born in Geneva, Switzerland, and died in France.
Biography
The artistic education of Pierre-Georges Jeanniot began with his father, Pierre-Alexandre Jeanniot (1826-1892), a long time director of l'École des Beaux-Arts of DijonDijon
Dijon is a city in eastern France, the capital of the Côte-d'Or département and of the Burgundy region.Dijon is the historical capital of the region of Burgundy. Population : 151,576 within the city limits; 250,516 for the greater Dijon area....
, France. Nevertheless, Pierre-Georges Jeanniot started out pursuing a military career, as an infantry officer (1866-1881), but he never ceased drawing. He was known for the first time in 1872 at the art exhibition Salon de Paris, where he presented a watercolor painting called Intérieur de forêt. The next year he presented the painting Le Vernan à Nass-sous-Sainte-Anne. From then on he was a regular contributor to the Salon de Paris, where he presented new works with views of Toulouse, Paris, Troyes, the edges of the Seine, and some portraits.
In 1881, after the army offered him the rank of commandant, he resigned to devote himself exclusively to painting. He took up residence in Paris. His works from this period represent mainly scenes of military life that allowed him to forge a reputation. Jeanniot established himself permanently in 1882 and obtained his first award the following year (medal third class of the Salon de Paris) with his les Flanqueurs (1883, Musée du Luxembourg
Musée du Luxembourg
Musée du Luxembourg is a museum in Paris, France. It occupies the east wing of the Palais du Luxembourg, whose matching west wing originally housed Ruben's Marie de' Medici cycle. Since 2000 it has been run by the French Ministry of Culture and the Senate and is devoted to temporary exhibitions...
). In 1886, La ligne de feu, souvenirs de la bataille de Rezonville, remembering the Battle of Mars-La-Tour
Battle of Mars-La-Tour
The Battle of Mars-La-Tour was fought on 16 August 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War near the town of Mars-La-Tour in northeast France. Two Prussian corps encountered the entire French Army of the Rhine in a meeting engagement, and with the surprise entailed, successfully forced the Army of the...
(Museum of Pau), assured his notoriety.
From then on, he started to show a certain artistic independence. He then mostly portrayed Parisian women during the "Belle Epoque", women in bathing suits on the beaches (a new phenomenon in those times) or scenes on the race course. These paintings give us a vivid sociological portrayal of his times. But as soon as the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts was founded in 1899, he rallied to their new painting trend.
In Paris, he secured himself friendships and memories of Edouard 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....
, Pierre Puvis of Chavannes, Jean-Louis Carnival, Paul Helleu, and especially with Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas[p] , born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, was a French artist famous for his work in painting, sculpture, printmaking and drawing. He is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism although he rejected the term, and preferred to be called a realist...
, whom he revered as a master. He spent much time with Edgar Degas in his family home in Diénay (Côte-d'Or
Côte-d'Or
Côte-d'Or is a department in the eastern part of France.- History :Côte-d'Or is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on 4 March 1790. It was formed from part of the former province of Burgundy.- Geography :...
).
He was gifted with many talents and also excelled with his drawings. He showed in his drawings his passion and his artistic strength. They are vivacious, expressive and enthusiastic, while at the same time, rendering with a sense of humour the picturesque scenes of daily life. During the next decades he illustrated a large number of literary books, among them Le Voyage à Saint-Cloud, Germinie Lacerteux (1886), Contes choisis" (Guy de Maupassant
Guy de Maupassant
Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant was a popular 19th-century French writer, considered one of the fathers of the modern short story and one of the form's finest exponents....
, 1886), Tartarin de Tarascon
Tartarin de Tarascon
Tartarin of Tarascon is an 1872 novel written by the French author Alphonse Daudet.-Synopsis:It tells the burlesque adventures of Tartarin, a local hero of Tarascon, a small town in southern France, whose invented adventures and reputation as a swashbuckler finally force him to travel to a very...
(Daudet
Daudet
Daudet may refer to:* Alphonse Daudet, a French novelist*Léon Daudet, a French journalist, writer, an active Orléanist, and a member of the Académie Goncourt...
, 1887), "Les Liaisons dangereuses" (Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
Pierre Ambroise François Choderlos de Laclos was a French novelist, official and army general, best known for writing the epistolary novel Les Liaisons dangereuses ....
, 1917). He was also one of the illustrators of Les Misérables
Les Misérables
Les Misérables , translated variously from the French as The Miserable Ones, The Wretched, The Poor Ones, The Wretched Poor, or The Victims), is an 1862 French novel by author Victor Hugo and is widely considered one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century...
(Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo
Victor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....
, 1887), La Débâcle et La Curée (Emile Zola
Émile Zola
Émile François Zola was a French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism...
, 1893-1894), Le Calvaire (Octave Mirbeau
Octave Mirbeau
Octave Mirbeau was a French journalist, art critic, travel writer, pamphleteer, novelist, and playwright, who achieved celebrity in Europe and great success among the public, while still appealing to the literary and artistic avant-garde...
, 1901), Le Misanthrope (Molière
Molière
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature...
, 1907), Les Paysans (Honoré de Balzac
Honoré de Balzac
Honoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of short stories and novels collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon....
, 1911), and Candide (Voltaire
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire , was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, free trade and separation of church and state...
) and many more.
He was one of the first collaborators (together with Théodore de Banville
Théodore de Banville
Théodore Faullain de Banville was a French poet and writer.-Biography:Banville was born in Moulins in Allier, Auvergne, the son of a captain in the French navy. His boyhood, by his own account, was cheerlessly passed at a lycée in Paris; he was not harshly treated, but took no part in the...
, Alphonse Daudet
Alphonse Daudet
Alphonse Daudet was a French novelist. He was the father of Léon Daudet and Lucien Daudet.- Early life :Alphonse Daudet was born in Nîmes, France. His family, on both sides, belonged to the bourgeoisie. The father, Vincent Daudet, was a silk manufacturer — a man dogged through life by misfortune...
and Joseph de Nittis) of the review La Vie Moderne and also contributed to the review La Lutte Moderne. In a later stage he became the director of Le Journal Amusant, while also offering contributions to Rire and L'Écho de Paris
L'Écho de Paris
L'Écho de Paris was a daily newspaper in Paris from 1884 to 1944.The paper's editorial stance was initially conservative and nationalistic, although it did later become close to the French Socialist Party. Its writers included Octave Mirbeau, Georges Clemenceau, Henry Bordeaux, François Mitterrand,...
.
As an engraver, he also sketches ironic scenes from the daily life depicting in lively traits the snobs of Paris. His talents suggest a resemblance to the works of Toulouse-Lautrec and Mary Cassatt
Mary Cassatt
Mary Stevenson Cassatt was an American painter and printmaker. She lived much of her adult life in France, where she first befriended Edgar Degas and later exhibited among the Impressionists...
. At the same time he also used the woodcut
Woodcut
Woodcut—occasionally known as xylography—is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges...
printing technique allowing vivid contrasts between dark and bright parts of the image.
His works can be found in many museums, though most are situated in France (Alais, Nancy, Paris, Carnavalet, Pau, Toul and Toulouse), but some in other countries (Oslo, New York, Buenos Aires).
List of honours
- 1882 :Honourable mention, Salon de paris
- 1884 : Third-class medal, Salon de Paris
- 1889, 1900 : Silver medal, Salon de Paris
- 1906 : Chevalier in the Légion d'honneurLégion d'honneurThe Legion of Honour, or in full the National Order of the Legion of Honour is a French order established by Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of the Consulat which succeeded to the First Republic, on 19 May 1802...
Selected works
- Partie de Polo, oil on canvas, 1920 (sold in 1997 for 40,000 FRFFrench francThe franc was a currency of France. Along with the Spanish peseta, it was also a de facto currency used in Andorra . Between 1360 and 1641, it was the name of coins worth 1 livre tournois and it remained in common parlance as a term for this amount of money...
) - Le Vaguemestre, lithograph, 1915
- Paysage de la campagne et du village de Villecomte, oil on canvas, 1909
- Femme au rive de la rivière, oil on canvas, 1908 (sold in 1993 for 6,325 USDUnited States dollarThe United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
) - Après le bain, etching, 1908
- La lecture, oil on paper remounted on panel, 1906 (sold in 1990 for 6,800 FRF)
- Le Dîner à l'Hotel Ritz, oil, 1904
- L'introduction, watercolour, 1902
- Femme assise dans un parloir, oil on canvas, 1905 (sold in 1995)
- Au tailleur, oil on canvas, 1901 (sold in 1987 for 8,000 USD)
- Le Buveur d'Absinthe, etching and pencil, 1900
- La Place de la Concorde vue du Jardin des Tuileries, oil on panel, 1900
- Spectateurs au Polo, etching, 1900
- Scène de café, 1892 (sold in 1985 for 2,800 USD)
- Nuit sur la Seine, oil on canvas, 1892
- Barques en Automne, pastel on paper, 1891
- Portrait d'Edgar Degas, etching, 1891 (sold in 1994 for 3,500 FRF)
- Place de la Concorde enneigée, watercolour heightened with gouache, 1888 (sold in 1983 for 500 GBPPound sterlingThe pound sterling , commonly called the pound, is the official currency of the United Kingdom, its Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, British Antarctic Territory and Tristan da Cunha. It is subdivided into 100 pence...
) - Partie de Polo, oil on canvas, 1887 (sold in 1977 for 5,000 FRF and in 1995 for 100,000 FRF))
- Germaine Larceteux, book illustration, 1886
- Prise d'armes, Place des Invalides, 1883 (sold in 1942 for 2,000 FRF)
- Les Flanqueurs, watercolour, 1882, Musée du Luxembourg
- La Ligne de Feu, oil on canvas, 1870
- La charge des cuirassiers à Waterloo, drawing (sold in 1895 for 60 FRF)
- Vieux paysan limousin (sold in 1920 for 400 FRF)
- Chez la modiste (sold in 1925 for 190 FRF)
- L'arrivée du mailcoach au château, watercolour (sold in 1929 for 900 FRF)
- L'Arlequin, charcoal and wash drawing (sold in 1941 for 1,300 FRF)
- La partie de billard (sold in 1943 for 4,700 FRF)
- Portrait d'homme (sold in 1945 for 1,700 FRF)
- Jeune femme, drawing (sold in 1946 for 2,500 FRF)
- Femme dans un intérieur, watercolour (sold in 1948 for 9,000 FRF)
- Galopeurs sur le champs des courses, oil on panel, (sold in 1995 for 35,000 FRF)
- Elégantes au jardin, wash, charcoal and gouache (sold in 1997 for 1,000 FRF)
- En fiacre, charcoal and wash (sold in 1997 for 1,350 FRF)
- Elegante conversation, wash, gouache and watercolour (sold in 1997 for 1,600 FRF)
- Trois élégantes dans une chairière, wash, watercolour, gouache, charcoal and pencil (sold in 1997 for 1,800 FRF)
- Paris, oil on canvas (sold in 1997 for 2,000 FRF)
Further reading
- Bénézit - Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs; Libraire Gründ, Paris, 1976 ISBN 2700001540
- Osterwalder M., in : Dictionnaire des illustrateurs 1800-1914, Editions Ides et Calendes, Neuchâtel, 1989 ISBN 2825800309
- Robinchon François - L'Armée française vue par les peintres, 1870-1914; Herscher, Paris; ministère de la Défense, Paris, 2000