Henry Cros

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Henri Cros, self-portrait from 1889.

César Isidore Henry Cros , also Henri Cros (born November 16, 1840 in Narbonne , France , † January 31, 1907 in Sèvres , France), was a French glass artist , sculptor and painter . He was connected to the symbolism of the literary-artistic Parisian salon of Nina de Callias .

family

Henry Cros came from a family of intellectuals. He was the son of the philosopher Simon Charles Henri Cros (1803-1876) and Josephine Thor and the grandson of the author Antoine Cros (1769-1844). His brothers were the surgeon Antoine Hippolyte Cros (1833-1903), who as Antoine II was the third ruler of the Kingdom of Araucania and Patagonia , and the poet and inventor Charles Cros (1842-1888).

Life

  • Portrait of Venus, before 1907.

  • Garden vase from 1900

  • Relief plaque Apothéose de Victor Hugo in Victor Hugo's house.

  • Grave bust of the French actress Agar .

Henry Cros learned the Latin and Greek languages ​​and had knowledge of the Hebrew language. In 1854 he was instructed in painting. At the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris he became a student of the sculptors François Jouffroy and Antoine Étex and the painter Jules Valadon . In 1861 he showed his work for the first time in public and exhibited a plaster bust of his brother Charles, later he experimented with portrait busts made of terracotta , alabaster , marble and wax . In 1863 he took part in the Salon des Refusés . He formed multi-colored wax figures, exhibited them and received several commissions on them. He also tried his hand at encaustic painting and published a book on the technique. He also experimented with color photography .

Henry Cros was "obsessed with the idea of ​​creating colored sculptures". While studying ancient Greek and Egyptian glass panels in the Musée du Louvre , he discovered that objects made of glass were colored through in several shades that could not be produced using traditional methods, as the heat from the kiln kept the colors flowing and mixing. In 1884 he experimented with his first medallion in the oven in his kitchen using the pâte de verre multicolor fused glass technique , which showed a portrait of his niece Laure-Thérèse Cros , the daughter of his brother Antoine Hippolyte and later Princess of Araucania and Patagonia. Satisfied with the result, he built a kiln in his workshop. From then on he devoted himself to working with pâte de verre and made numerous panels, round windows and medallions with bas-reliefs , which mostly followed allegorical or mythical themes. His art nouveau works often had a rough surface or broken edges, which he tried to emphasize the antique look.

At the International Exhibition in Paris in 1869, Cros received a silver medal. His panels impressed the director of the Paris art school École des Beaux-Arts so much that he recommended the Manufacture royale de porcelaine de Sèvres to provide Cros with an oven. The management of the company hesitated, but the successor to the director of the school, Henry Roujon , obtained a ministerial order in 1891 and finally convinced the manufacture in 1893 to give Cros a dispensable kiln; He also helped Cros get a grant from the Ministry of Fine Arts. Cros now began to experiment with larger panels that were later assembled from individual parts. He completed his first panel with the title The History of Water in 1894. The following year he was accepted as a knight in the Legion of Honor . A workshop was finally found for him in a disused windmill in Sèvres, and the construction of a new furnace began, which was completed in 1897.

Here he was able to execute the monumental pâte de verre panels he had planned . He completed his second large panel, The Story of Fire , in 1900 and showed it in the same year at the Paris World Exhibition , where it was awarded a gold medal and finally acquired by the Musée des Arts décoratifs in Paris. His third large panel, The Apotheosis of Victor Hugo , was completed in 1905 and installed in Hugo's house, which now houses a museum ( Maison de Victor Hugo ). His last large table was to be the wall decoration above a mantelpiece in the Château de Grosbois of Prince de Wagram in Grosbois , but the project was interrupted by Cros' death in 1907.

The artist had only introduced his son Jean Cros (1884–1932) to the techniques of making pâte de verre , the only one of his three children who had worked with him. Jean completed the wall decorations and continued to work in his father's studio, where he made a series of panels depicting Provencal landscapes and scenes from paintings by members of the Nabis artist group . He also made several models from Pâte de verre based on sculptures by his friends Antoine Bourdelle and Auguste Rodin . After he quit the factory in Sèvres in 1912, he set up a studio in his house. From 1918 until his death, he specialized in the production of pâte de verre panels for wall lights and lamps, with the support of his younger sister. He took the knowledge about the manufacture of glass paste passed on from his father to his grave.

Publications

  • With Charles Henry: L'encaustique et les autres procédés de peinture chez les anciens. Histoire et technique. Rouam, Paris 1884, 130 pp.

literature

  • Victor Arwas : The Art of Glass. Art Nouveau to Art Deco. Papadakis Publisher, 1996, ISBN 1-901092-00-3 , p. 54 ( books.google.com.au ).
  • Janine Bloch-Dermant: The art of French glass, 1860-1914. Thames and Hudson, 1980, p. 170.
  • Gordon Campbell: The Grove Encyclopedia of Decorative Arts. Volume 1, Oxford University Press, USA, 2006, ISBN 978-0-19-518948-3 , pp. 287f.

Web links

Commons : Henry Cros  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Philippe Araucanie: Historia del reino de Araucanía (1860-1987). Una dinastía de príncipes franceses in America Latina. Prensa y Ediciones Iberoamericanas, 1988, p. 276.
  2. ↑ Antoine IV . In: North American Araucanian Royalist Society (NAARS)
  3. ^ Báez Allende, Peter Mason: Zoológicos humanos. Photographs de fueguinos and mapuche en the Jardín d'acclimatation de París, siglo XIX. Pehuén Editores Limitada, 2006, ISBN 956-16-0412-4 , p. 41 ( books.google.com.au ).
  4. ↑ a b c d e f Victor Arwas : The Art of Glass. Art Nouveau to Art Deco. Papadakis Publisher, Windsor, Berks, England 1996, ISBN 1-901092-00-3 , p. 54 ( books.google.com.au ).
  5. ↑ a b Yves Delaborde: Le verre. Art & design, XIXe-XXIe siècles. ACR Courbevoie, Hauts-de-Seine 2011.
  6. ↑ Stanislas Lami : Cros, César Isidore Henry. In: Dictionnaire des sculpteurs de l'École française au dix-neuvième siècle. Volume 4, Part 1: A – C. É. Champion, Paris 1914 ( gallica.bnf.fr ).
  7. ^ A b Carolin Herrmann: Flora, Circe and Medea at the Veste Coburg. In: infranken.de
  8. ↑ Le souverain caché. L'age d'homme, 2000, p. 150.
  9. ↑ Jutta-Annette Page, Peter Morrin, Robert Bell: Color Ignited: Glass 1962–2012. BookBaby, 2012, ISBN 978-0-935172-49-2 , p. 11.
  10. ^ Cros, Cezar Isidore Henry. In: Base Léonore
personal data
SURNAME Cros, Henry
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cros, César Isidore Henry (maiden name); Cros, Cezar Isidore Henry; Cros, Henri
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French glass artist
DATE OF BIRTH November 16, 1840
PLACE OF BIRTH Narbonne , France
DATE OF DEATH January 31, 1907
Place of death Sèvres , France