Victor Chocquet

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Pierre-Auguste Renoir , Portrait of Victor Chocquet [2], 1876, Oskar Reinhart Collection “Am Römerholz”, Winterthur
Paul Cézanne: Portrait of Victor Chocquet , 1876/77, private collection
Paul Cézanne: Portrait of Victor Chocquet Seated , (around 1877), Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus (Ohio)

Victor Chocquet (born December 19, 1821 in Lille , † April 7, 1891 in Paris ) was a French art collector.

Life

Chocquet worked in Hattenville in Normandy as Rédacteur à la direction générale des douanes . In 1877 he retired as Chief Inspector of the Paris Customs Administration so that, with his monthly salary of just over 300 francs, he could devote himself entirely to his real passion, collecting art. First Chocquet bought paintings by Eugène Delacroix , then he discovered the Impressionists , especially Pierre-Auguste Renoir , as well as Gustave Courbet , Manet and Corot .

In Julien “Père” Tanguy's art shop he made the acquaintance of numerous Impressionist painters; at an auction at the Hôtel Drouot he met Auguste Renoir as early as 1875, who portrayed him the following year. Through Renoir he met Paul Cezanne , to whom a deep friendship developed; Cézanne then portrayed Chocquet in his Paris apartment at 198 Rue de Rivoli . Chocquet was the first to collect paintings by Cézanne until he finally owned 35 of his works.

At the third group exhibition of the French Impressionists in April 1877, Cezanne also showed a portrait of Chocquet ("Portrait of Victor Chocquet sitting"), which, due to its strong colors, attracted the mockery of the public at the time and fierce press criticism. “But Chocquet was not discouraged. He tirelessly tried to convince the visitors of Cézanne's skills at the exhibition. ”The art historian Götz Adriani quotes the contemporary art critic Théodore Duret :

“He was worth seeing, he became a kind of apostle. He went to every visitor he knew, he just approached others and tried to convey his admiration and joy to them. It was a thankless task ... All he got was smiles and mockery. But Chocquet did not allow himself to be discouraged [...] He was tireless especially when Cézanne was up for debate because he considered him the best painter ... Many were amused by Chocquet's enthusiasm, which they regarded as a sort of mental derangement. "

In addition to the portrait of the seated Chocquet, there is a half-length portrait acquired later by Degas , which repeats a section of the full-format composition. With his first Chocquet portrait from 1876, Renoir had given the compositional idea of ​​the frontality of the head and upper body; this showed the fine features of Chocquet against the background of a Delacroix painting.

Paul Cezanne painted "The Orchard (Hattenville)" in 1882 when he was staying there as a guest of Victor Chocquet. After the death of his widow Marie in 1899, the estate of the childless couple Chocquet was auctioned, including 30 paintings by Cezanne, 23 by Delacroix, five Manets and ten each by Renoirs and Claude Monets .

Portraits by Victor Chocquet

exhibition

Victor Chocquet: friend and collector of the impressionists: Renoir, Cézanne, Monet, Manet. Oskar Reinhart Collection “Am Römerholz” , Winterthur , February 21 to June 7, 2015

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Victor Chocquet: Friend and collector of the Impressionists: Renoir, Cézanne, Monet, Manet , portalkunstgeschichte.de, accessed on January 10, 2015
  2. ↑ He acquired u. a. Le Paveurs, Rue de Berne , 1878 (road workers, Rue de Berne), cf. Douglas Cooper: The Courtauld Collection: a catalog and introduction. London, Athlone Press, 1954
  3. ↑ Portrait of Chocquets at serdar-hizli-art
  4. ↑ Ulrike Becks-Malorny: Paul Cézanne, 1839-1906: Pioneer of Modernism , p. 35
  5. ↑ a b c d Götz Adriani: Cézanne paintings . Cologne, DuMont 1993, p. 83 f
  6. ↑ cf. Francesca Bardazzi, Paul Cézanne: Cézanne in Florence: Two Collectors and the 1910 Exhibition of Impressionism
  7. ↑ a b Renoir's works at zeno.org
  8. ^ Works by Paul Cézanne at zeno.org
  9. ↑ Information on the painting on the website of the Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia ( Memento from February 7, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  10. ↑ Victor Chocquet: Friend and collector of the Impressionists: Renoir, Cézanne, Monet, Manet , portalkunstgeschichte.de, accessed on January 10, 2015
personal data
SURNAME Chocquet, Victor
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French art collector
DATE OF BIRTH December 19, 1821
PLACE OF BIRTH Lille
DATE OF DEATH April 7, 1891
Place of death Paris