Achille Emperaire

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Achille Emperaire around 1895

Achille Emperaire (born September 16, 1829 in Aix-en-Provence , † January 8, 1898 ibid) was a French painter and friend of Paul Cézanne .

Life

Paul Cézanne : Portrait of Achille Emperaire , Musée d'Orsay , Paris, around 1868

Achille Emperaire was born in Aix-en-Provence in 1829 with a physical handicap and remained dwarfishly small.

Emperaire took drawing lessons at Aix from 1844 to 1856, and then went to Paris for further studies at the painting school of Thomas Couture , while Cézanne finished his schooling in 1858. They only met in 1861 at the Académie Suisse in Paris . Emperaire was happy to have any help to get the degree, as he would have lived on the street. He even wrote in a letter, “If I can occasionally spend 80 centimes on a meal, it seems like an orgy to me. […] Yes, Paris is a big grave. […] Few of them manage, most perish ”.

The evening before his first exhibition in Paris, he added an untested varnish to the canvas of a painting . The next day the painting was destroyed. He was so appalled by this that he never used varnish again, which explains why many of his paintings no longer exist. It is only thanks to the intervention of the son of Joseph Ravaisou, a French painter, that some paintings have been preserved.

By lucky coincidence, Emperaire was commissioned to paint a painting for the Louvre and he received 1,000 francs for it, which was a considerable sum for the time. This merit allowed him to settle some debts and enabled him to travel to Aix in October 1873. That year he met the writer Joachim Gasquet in Aix, who would remain his best friend until the end of his life.

Emperaire returned to Paris in 1881 and the following year and was honored with a membership in the Société libre des Artistes français . He has not left Aix since 1873. He often went to the area around Tholonet to paint there. He died on January 8, 1898 in Aix-en-Provence.

Work (selection)

The duel , 1895

Despite his ten-year friendship with Cézanne, he did not adopt his painting style. His role models were Titian and Édouard Manet . Some of his works are exhibited in the Musée Granet in Aix-en-Provence.

painting

  • Nu couché
  • Baigneuse de Saul (a self-portrait on the reverse)
  • Portrait de femme en buste (on the reverse a kneeling nude)
  • Paysage de la campagne d'Aix
  • Nature morte ou pichet (on the back two amazons in the forest)
  • Nature morte aux pêches ainsi que plusieurs dessins
  • Amazon
  • La République s'offrant aux hommages de ses adorateurs ou Suzanne au bain (1887)
  • Bethsabée aux bains (1895)
  • Le Duel (1895)

Web links

Commons : Achille Emperaire  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Achille Emperaire . Les Maîtres Provençaux sont sur Artistes Provençaux
  2. ↑ Alauzen: La Peinture en Provence , pp. 243–245
  3. ↑ Hommage à Rembrandt (1868). Célébration de l'arbre (1877). L'arbre et ses fruits dans les collections du musée (1978). Leaflets for exhibitions in the musée Granet
  4. ^ F. Baille, Les Petits Maîtres d'Aix à la Belle Époque , pages 82 to 86
personal data
SURNAME Emperaire, Achille
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French painter
DATE OF BIRTH September 16, 1829
PLACE OF BIRTH Aix-en-Provence
DATE OF DEATH January 8, 1898
Place of death Aix-en-Provence