Thomas Couture

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Thomas Couture, self-portrait
Coutures grave in the Pere Lachaise cemetery

Thomas Couture (born December 21, 1815 in Senlis , Département Oise ; died March 30, 1879 in Villiers-le-Bel , Département Val-d'Oise ) was a French painter .

Life

Couture was a student of Antoine-Jean Gros and Paul Delaroche . He gained a high reputation in the early 1840s because he knew how to combine the elegance of drawing, which was characteristic of the classical French school, with an increased charm of color and sweep of the representation; there was no point in calling him a French Veronese and hoping that a great colorist school would emerge from his appearance.

His main work The Romans of the Decay (in the Musée d'Orsay ), which celebrated a triumph in the Salon of 1847 like hardly ever the work of a French painter before, is just as effective through the brilliant bravura of the drawing as through the coloring, its muted glow harmonizes with the fabric of the picture. This picture was preceded by several other works by the master, which show the same ideas and advantages, even if not yet in the same development; so The Young Venetian after an orgy , The Prodigal Son , The Love of Gold (painted in 1844, in the Museum of Toulouse) and The Triumph of the Courtesan .

The falconer became very famous in 1855 ; but couture did not achieve anything more important after its decadence . His wall paintings in the parish church of St-Eustache de Paris , taken from the life of Mary, are meaningless and mannered. On the other hand, his virtuoso technique attracted a large number of students, including from Germany, so that he was a very sought-after master, especially in the 1850s. His students included Puvis de Chavannes , William Morris Hunt , Anselm Feuerbach , Victor Müller , Édouard Manet , Marcellin Desboutin and the future journalist and politician Antonin Proust .

Thomas Couture died at the age of 63 on March 30, 1879 in his castle in Villiers-le-Bel, Île-de-France.

Couture became known again because one of his works was in the so-called Schwabinger Kunstfund and was returned to the heirs of the previous owner, the politician and Nazi opponent Georges Mandel , in early 2019 .

Works (selection)

The Romans of Decay

photos

Fonts

  • Méthode et entretiens d'atelier . Self-published, Paris 1868
  • Paysage. Entretiens d'atelier . Self-published, Paris 1869

literature

  • Georges Bertauts-Couture (Ed.): Thomas Couture, sa vie, son œuvre, son caractère, ses idées, sa méthode . Le Garrec, Paris 1932.
  • Albert Boime : Thomas Couture and the Eclectic Vision . Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn. 1980, ISBN 0-300-02158-5 .
  • Armand Dayot (Ed.): Exposition des œuvres de Thomas Couture . Levesque, Paris 1913.
  • Robert Kashey (Ed.): Thomas Couture. Drawings and some oil sketches . Shepherd Gallery, New York 1971.
  • Bénédicte Ottinger (Ed.): Thomas Couture (1815–1879). Portrait d'une époque . Somogy, Paris 2003, ISBN 2-85056-684-5 .

Web links

Commons : Thomas Couture  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Nicola Kuhn: Handing over of the portrait of Thomas Couture to the heirs while still in the Martin-Gropius-Bau. Another Gurlitt work is being restituted , Der Tagesspiegel, January 6, 2019
personal data
SURNAME Couture, Thomas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French painter
DATE OF BIRTH December 21, 1815
PLACE OF BIRTH Senlis , Oise department
DATE OF DEATH March 30, 1879
Place of death Villiers-le-Bel , Val-d'Oise department