Jules Lefebvre: 67 Masterpieces E-Book

Maria Tsaneva

• Herausgeber: Maria Tsaneva
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Jules Joseph Lefebvre (1836–1911) was a French figure painter, educator and theorist. Like a typical academic artist, Lefèbvre started his career with the traditional subject matter of histories and other narratives. It would not be till later in his career that he would focus exclusively on the human figure in portraiture and especially the female nude, with great ability and success. Many of his paintings are single figures of beautiful women. Among his best portraits were those of M. L. Reynaud and the Prince Imperial (1874). He won the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1861. Among his famous students were Fernand Khnopff, Kenyon Cox, Félix Vallotton, Ernst Friedrich von Liphart, Georges Rochegrosse, the Scottish-born landscape painter William Hart, and Edmund C. Tarbell, who became an American Impressionist painter.

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Jules Lefebvre: 67Masterpieces

By Maria Tsaneva

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Copyright © 2014 by Maria Tsaneva

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Jules Lefebvre: 67Masterpieces

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Foreword

Jules Joseph Lefebvre (1836–1911) was a French figure painter, educator and theorist.Like a typical academic artist, Lefèbvre started his career with the traditional subject matter of histories and other narratives. It would not be till later in his career that he would focus exclusively on the human figure in portraiture and especially the female nude, with great ability and success. Many of his paintings are single figures of beautiful women. Among his best portraits were those of M. L. Reynaud and the Prince Imperial (1874). He won the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1861. Among his famous students were Fernand Khnopff, Kenyon Cox, Félix Vallotton, Ernst Friedrich von Liphart, Georges Rochegrosse, the Scottish-born landscape painter William Hart, and Edmund C. Tarbell, who became an American Impressionist painter.

Lefebvre was born in Tournan-en-Brie, Seine-et-Marne, on 14 March 1836. Though his father was only a baker, he nonetheless encouraged his son to pursue painting, sending him to study in Paris in 1852. There, Lefèbvre became a pupil of Léon Cogniet and a year later started attending the École des Beaux Arts. His debut at the Paris Salon was in 1855. He then spent the next few years pursuing the coveted Prix de Rome (the main competition for young painters, which would win him five years of study in Rome and a reputation that would all but guarantee a successful career). In 1859 he came close, placing second. Two years later the history painting The Death of Priam would win him first place.

It would be during his stay in Rome that he would find his individual artistic niche. Able to study the great Italian masters, Lefèbvre was fascinated by the Mannerist painters, especially Andrea del Sarto. He copied his work avidly and demonstrated Andrea’s influence in his painting Boy Painting a Tragic Mask (1863). It was also during this time that his interest in the female nude began, painting his first in 1863. Among other works he did in Rome, he sent the narrative Roman Charity to the salon of 1864 and painted Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi in 1866. The latter narrative, however, was ill received by experts, arousing overwhelming criticism. That same year his parents and one of his sisters died. These negative events in both his personal and professional life sent him into severe depression.

He emerged from his depression and came back to Paris with a different approach to art and a change of interest in subject matter. He apparently became disenchanted with the traditional formulaic approach to painting, instead turning towards more precise rendering from life. In 1868 he exhibited a Reclining Nude at the Salon, which unlike his last significant work, won him much praise. Two years later, his allegory of Truth became his first great success. What followed in the decades to come were variations on Truth. His many beautiful nudes took the roles of Mary Magdalene (1876), Pandora (1877), Diana (1879), Psyche (1883), and Aurora among others. His nudes became so famous that his only rival was considered to be Bouguereau. Unlike Bouguereau’s figures though, Lefébvre used a greater variety of models, which can be seen in his work.

Between 1855 and 1898, he exhibited 72 portraits in the Paris Salon. In 1891, he became a member of the French Académie des Beaux-Arts. He was an instructor at the Académie Julian in Paris. Lefebvre is chiefly important as an excellent and sympathetic teacher who numbered many Americans among his 1500 or more pupils.

Lefebvre died in Paris, on 24 February 1911.

Paintings and Drawings

Truth (1870)

Oil on canvas