François-Marius Granet

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Portrait François-Marius Granet by Ingres (1807)

François-Marius Granet (born December 17, 1775 in Aix-en-Provence , † November 21, 1849 in Malvalat / Aix-en-Provence) was a French landscape , genre and history painter of Classicism and Romanticism . From 1826 to 1846 he worked as a curator at the Louvre .

Life

Childhood and Education (1775–1802)

Granet grew up as the son of a master bricklayer in the southern French city of Aix-en-Provence. There he visited the studio of the landscape painter Jean-Antoine Constantin and learned to paint from nature. In the studio he also met Count Auguste de Forbin , whose friendship was decisive for Granet's career and who became his patron . In 1794 Granet went to Toulon and worked there for some time as a decorative painter at the Arsenal .

Monks in the
Hermitage cave , Saint Petersburg

In 1796 Forbin brought his friend to Paris and made it possible for him to study the Flemish and Dutch masters in the Louvre. Thanks to Forbin, Granet was also able to join Jacques Louis David 's highly coveted studio in 1798 , where he developed a keen sense for balanced composition and unity of drawing. He stayed there for several months and, like many landscape painters of his time, went through a process of simplification that led him from nature to model. Granet developed a keen sense for colors, which he used to loosen up the structure of the picture. In Paris, Granet also met Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres , whose style strongly influenced him. From 1799 to 1801, Granet caused quite a stir with various monastery and church interiors that contrasted with the anti-clerical mood of the time.

Stay in Rome (1802-1824)

La Trinité-des-Monts et la Villa Médicis, à Rome (1808)
Louvre , Paris

In 1802 Granet left Paris and embarked in Marseilles with Forbin for Italy , where he stayed until 1824. In Rome , which became his second home, he made his final breakthrough. From 1806 he supplied the Paris Salon with the interiors of Roman churches, monasteries and studios, into which he liked to add historical or contemporary figural staffage ( Sodoma in the hospital , Louvre). With the support of important people such as Cardinal Joseph Fesch and General Sextius Alexandre François de Miollis , Granet managed to integrate himself into society in Rome and was appreciated by artists such as Ingres, Antonio Canova and Vincenzo Camuccini . In the following years he made many trips that took him to France, the area around Rome and Naples (1811). From 1813 he was a member of the Roman Luke Academy and in 1819 in the Legion of Honor . In 1822 he painted temporarily in Assisi and repeatedly returned to Rome for longer stays.

Between Paris and Versailles (1824–1847)

In 1824 he returned to Paris, where he regularly exhibited in the salon and began a museum career. Initially appointed as deputy curator of the Royal Museums (1824) and the Musée du Luxembourg (1825), he was finally appointed curator of the Louvre in 1826. In 1827 he became a member of the Prussian Academy of the Arts in Berlin and in 1830, with the support of Ingres and David d'Angers, a member of the Institut français . From Louis-Philippe I , he received a prestigious commission to produce 24 historical paintings for the collections in Versailles and the royal private collection. He moved to Versailles, where he took over the management of the picture gallery in 1830 and was employed as director of the Musée historique in 1833 .

The last years (1848–1849)

After the revolution of 1848/49 , Granet retired to his Malvalat estate near Aix, where he donated the entire inventory of his studio to the Granet Museum .

plant

Capuchin Choir (1814)

Granet was best known for his history painting in Gothic style and for his romantic genre painting. His romantic scenes in sacred architecture made him known early on as the “ Capuchin painter ”. His atmospheric pictures with silent cathedrals and the rediscovered monastic spirituality were the beginning of a new kind of painting of feelings. An example of this is his Capuchin Choir (1814), inspired by the church in Piazza Barberini in Rome , which he exhibited in the Paris Salon in 1819 and copied about fifteen times. In addition, he also made landscape pictures from the area around Rome, which can be compared with those of Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot . The most famous of these are probably the Church of Subiaco ( Musée Calvet , Avignon ) or the Church of Ognissanti (1807, Musée Granet , Aix-en-Provence). The clear composition of cubic elements may have influenced the work of Paul Cézanne .

Stella in Prison (1810)
Pushkin Museum , Moscow

Granet himself divided his works into "interiors" and "ruins". He often chose monasteries, damp crypts or prisons as interiors, which he used as backdrops for the stories of famous personalities, for example in The painter Stella in prison (1810) or Montaigne visits Torquato Tasso in prison (1820). It is characteristic of this type of picture that it is permeated by a mysterious atmosphere and characterized by light-and-shadow contrasts. Granet referred to works as “ruins” with excerpts depicting Rome from nature, which intended a new kind of atmospheric depiction. It is noticeable that he increased the abbreviated representation instinctively developed by Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes to the extreme. Granet introduced the technique of cross-fading in his light painting, which led to a new perception of the surfaces and with which he exerted a decisive influence on the development of the monastery interior and open-air painting.

La Récolte des citrouilles à la Bastide de Malvalat (1796)
Musée Granet, Aix-en-Provence

Granet is represented in the Louvre with five paintings, 200 drawings and 130 watercolors . He did not gain fame until 1913 through the Paris exhibition David et ses Eleves , where his own room was set up and his importance as an air and light painter was recognized. Despite its dull and heavy colors, it had already anticipated some of the problems of Impressionism .

His estate can be found in the Musée Granet in Aix-en-Provence, which was renamed in 1949 on the 100th anniversary of his death (inaugurated in 1838 under the name Musée d'Aix ). The collection includes 600 drawings and watercolors, around 200 small-format oil paintings , as well as letters and documents and forms the core of the museum.

Works (selection)

  • Aix-en-Provence, Granet Museum
Self-Portrait (1797)
Reception of the cardinals at Villa Aldobrandini in Frascati (1822)
Death of Poussins (1833)
School of nuns (around 1837)
Christians recover the body of a martyr in the evening during the persecution of Christians in Rome (1846)
Nostradamus, physician and astrologer of Charles IX. (1846)
The cloister of the Église du Christ Rédempteur in Aix (1847)
  • Angers, Turpin de Crissé Museum
Capuchin Choir (1818)
  • Dreux, Musée d'art et d'histoire
Interior of the Church of Subiaco (1818)
  • Fontainebleau, Musee National du Château
Saint Louis frees the French prisoners in Damiette (1831)
  • Frascati
The painter Domenichino is received by Cardinal Aldobrandini in Frascati (1822)
  • Munich, Neue Pinakothek
Savonarola in his cell (1830)
  • New York, Museum of Modern Art
The Choir of the Capuchins in Piazza Barberini in Rome (1815)
  • Paris, Louvre
Vedute of the Trinità dei Monti and Villa Medici (1808)
Interior of the lower church of Assisi (1823)
  • Paris, Petit Palais
Queen Bianca of Castile frees the prisoners (1821)
  • St. Petersburg, Hermitage
Capuchin Choir (1818)
The Chapter of Monks (1833)
  • Versailles, château
Funeral ceremony for the victims of the Fieschi assassination attempt (1839)
Godfrey of Bouillon hangs the trophies of Ascalon on the Holy Sepulcher (1839)

literature

Web links

Commons : François Marius Granet  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ^ Stéphane Loire: Peintures italiennes du XVII e du musée du Louvre: Florence, Gênes, Lombardie, Naples, Rome et Venise. Gallimard, Paris 2006, ISBN 2-07-011828-2 , p. 32.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Anna Ottani Cavina: Granet, François-Marius . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 60, Saur, Munich a. a. 2008, ISBN 978-3-598-22800-1 , p. 317.
  3. ↑ a b c d e Hans Vollmer : Granet, François Marius . In: Ulrich Thieme , Fred. C. Willis (Ed.): General lexicon of visual artists from antiquity to the present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker . tape 14 : Giddens-Gress . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1921, p. 514-515 ( Text Archive - Internet Archive ).
  4. ↑ a b c d Stadler: Lexicon of Art. P. 203.
  5. ↑ A famous quote from David about Granet reads: il sent la couleur ("he feels the color").
  6. ↑ Short biography in the database of the AdK. Retrieved August 14, 2012 .
  7. ↑ Denis Coutagne and others: Le Musée Granet, Aix-en-Provence. Réunion des musées nationaux, Paris 2007, ISBN 978-2-7118-5292-5 .
personal data
SURNAME Granet, François-Marius
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Granet, François Marius
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French classicism painter
DATE OF BIRTH December 17, 1775
PLACE OF BIRTH Aix-en-Provence
DATE OF DEATH November 21, 1849
Place of death Malvalat, Aix-en-Provence