Pierre Auguste Cot

Pierre Auguste Cot ( born February 17, 1837 in Bédarieux, France; † August 2, 1883 in Paris) was a French painter.

Life and work

Pierre Auguste Cot was born in 1837 as son of Étienne Cot and Justine Cabrol in Bédarieux in the department of Hérault. He studied with Jean -Paul Laurens at the Ecole des Beaux -Arts of Toulouse, whose first popular student, he would later become. Then he moved to Paris, where he became a pupil of Léon Cogniet. He also studied under Alexandre Cabanel and William Adolphe Bouguereau. In 1863 he presented the first time at the Paris Salon. This was followed by twenty years of creation, in which Cot was particularly successful as a painter of portraits and allegorical and historical images. Pot also studied the ancient classics and chose themes from mythology for his works. 1868 and 1872 he traveled to Italy. From 1870 onwards, his popularity grew steadily, so that he was awarded with medals (1870, 1872, 1878) and was defeated in 1874, a Knight of the French Legion of Honour. He painted familiar images of art history as Spring (1873 ) and The Tempest (1880 ), which earned him a great reputation. In particular, the contemporary nobility, his works were highly sought after. He died in 1883 at age 46 in Paris.

Cot was married to the daughter of the sculptor Francisque Joseph Duret. From the marriage emerged Cots daughter Gabrielle, from William Adolphe Bouguereau painted a portrait, which he presented on the occasion of her marriage to the architect Zilin 1890.

Works (selection)

This image depicting a youthful couple on a swing, one Cots known works. He put it in 1873 with great success at the Paris Salon. There it was first bought by the industrialist and art patron John Wolfe, went through various private hands and was issued from 1903 to 1939 in the Brooklyn Museum. 2012 gave the last private owner it the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it had been previously issued on loan for six years.

In this painting, a young couple is shown, the refuge from a storm. Contemporary critics suspected a literary work such as Daphnis and Chloe by Longus or Paul and Virginie by Jacques -Henri Bernardin de Saint -Pierre. The work was in 1880 by the art collector and philanthropist Catharine Lorillard Wolfe ( 1828-1887 ) issued on behalf of Cot at the Paris Salon. It was similar to very popular as Spring. Many reproductions have been made ​​of it, not just in terms of graphics and paintings, but also as a tapestry, porcelain and subjects. 1887 The storm went as part of a comprehensive collection of 143 works of the late Wolfe in the possession of the Metropolitan Museum of Art on a separate gallery was there established to ensure the. In addition to the Metropolitan Museum of Art The storm has now been issued in the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa and the Appleton Museum of Art in Ocala.

Mireille was the last work of Cot, it was shown in 1883 at an exhibition in Amsterdam and later in the Musée du Luxembourg.

Several works of Cot hang in the Louvre in Paris.