Eugène Carrière

Eugène Carrière ( born January 18, 1849 in Gournay -sur -Marne, † March 27, 1906 in Paris) was a French painter and lithographer. The Symbolist is known for his portraits of artists and poets of his time, as well as dark, shadowy paintings of women and children.

Life

Eugène Carrière was born as the eighth of nine children in a very poor family and grew up in Strasbourg. There he completed a five year apprenticeship as a lithographer. Against the will of his father, he decided, inspired by the pictures of Rubens in the Louvre, which he admired, in 1869 to study at the Paris School of Art at Alexandre Cabanel. A year later he volunteered for the French army and got into Dresden in captivity.

In 1872 he returned to Paris. For a short stay in London, he learned the painting of William Turner know, who influenced him greatly. In this period also saw his marriage to Sophie Desmouceaux, with whom he later had seven children.

In the following years he lived as a commercial artist, without great success of odd jobs to support his growing family. He designed, among other things, greeting cards and worked in the porcelain manufactory at Sèvres, where developed a friendship with the also working there Auguste Rodin.

Success began for Carrière only set from 1889, when the Paris Salon he won an art prize 40 -year-old and received their own exhibitions. At this time he had previously painted more vivid images found on the typical style for which he is known today. In the following years Carrière was one of the most famous French painters of his time. He painted many portraits of celebrities of the time, were among his friends beside Rodin and Paul Gauguin and Edmond de Goncourt.

As a size of Parisian artists of the fin de siècle world Eugène Carrière was not apolitical and interested in contemporary events. He was one of a number of well known personalities who supported the J'accuse by Émile Zola in the Dreyfus affair.

In 1899 he founded the Académie Carrière, where among other Henri Matisse and André Derain among his pupils.

On March 27, 1906 Eugène Carrière died after a long illness of throat cancer. At his funeral, in which his friend Auguste Rodin held the grave speech, a large part of the Parisian artistic community was gathered.

Work

Carrière preferred mainly two issues. The representation of mothers with their children ( Gynaecology ) and portraits. At a young age he could afford as an unknown painter no models. This contributed to the fact that in many of his pictures of his family can be seen.

Eugène Carrière is known for the style to which he found in the late 1880s. This is in monochrome, gray - brown pictures, in which shadowy sign off the facial features of people from a misty, dark environment. In this way, his images create situations of great intimacy.

Carrière most famous work is a portrait of French poet Paul Verlaine, but he also painted portraits of Georges Clemenceau, Isadora Duncan and many other famous contemporary artists.

Effect

It is often believed that Pablo Picasso was in his blue period influenced by Carrière. Although Picasso dedicated to him a painting, this can not clearly prove.

During his lifetime, very well known and popular, Carrière came in the decades after his death, something forgotten. Although many well-known museums in Europe exhibit of his works, he stands in the shadow of more famous contemporaries. In 2006 there was the occasion of his one hundredth anniversary of the death intensified efforts to re- move Carrière work in the public spotlight, including an exhibition at the Musée d' Orsay, which has the world's largest collection of images Carrière.

Museums (selection)

• Hermitage, St. Petersburg
• Frick Collection, New York City
• Louvre, Paris
• Musée d' Orsay, Paris
• National Gallery, London
• Museum of Modern Art, New York City
• Muzeul Naţional de Arta al României, Bucharest
• Von der Heydt - Museum, Wuppertal