Ernest Hébert

Ernest Hébert ( born November 3, 1817 in La Tronche, near Grenoble, † November 5, 1908 ibid ), full name Antoine Auguste Ernest Hébert, was a French painter. He devoted himself mainly to landscape and genre painting, but created next to some historical paintings and portraits.

Life

Ernest Hébert, son of a notary in Grenoble, came in 1835 to Paris to study law. Although he attended the same workshop of the sculptor David d' Angers (1788-1856), later also of the history painter Hippolyte Delaroche (1797-1896), he acquired his artistic skill mostly taught himself to. At the age of 22, he recorded with his painting Le cup en prison success at the Paris Salon. The Académie des Beaux -Arts awarded him in 1839 from the biblical composition discovery of Joseph's cup in Benjamin's sack the Prix de Rome. The price was associated with a scholarship and a longer study stay at the Villa Medici in Rome, which the scholars of the time under the direction of the academic painter Jean -Auguste -Dominique Ingres standing (up to 1840) and Jean Victor Schnetz Académie de France à Rome was made available.

After his return Hébert became the official court painter of Napoleon III. appointed. He scored a triumphant success at the Paris Salon of 1850/51 with his well -known, malaria titled motif, one on the Tiber River with fever-stricken men and women gliding boat. Later Hébert continued his studies in the Dresden Gallery and strengthened by its direction, as evidenced by The Girls of Alvito and the Fienarolen of San Germano.

From the end of 1866 to 1873, he was first appointed as a director of the Académie de France in Rome. After his admission as a member of the Institut de France in 1874, he returned again from 1885 to 1891 as director of the Académie de France in Rome back.

Ernest Hébert died in 1908 shortly after completing his 91st birthday at his home in La Tronche, in whose garden he found his final resting place.

The Musée d' Orsay in Paris preserves several portraits of the artist, including one by Robert Jefferson Bingham from the period around 1870.

Work

Hébert came in 1840 for the first time to Rome and spent, with interruptions, a total of nearly thirty years of his life in Italy, which became his adopted home. The fascination with this country on him, his work had a lasting influence. He created poetic, sometimes melancholy landscape paintings in which he captured the light on the Lands in the vicinity of Rome, the harshness of the mountains of Cervara reproduced or represented the atmosphere of the Pontine Marshes. In genre pieces, he described the life and the plight of the Italian people, especially the rural population, the hustle and bustle in the streets, and not least the beauty of Italian women. For the Paris Panthéon, he created the mosaic of the apse. In his last years he turned to portraiture and religious themes.

Much of his work is preserved in Paris at the Musée Hébert and in the former mansion of the artist in La Tronche.

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