Biography
Alexandre Cabanel (28 September 1823 – 23 January 1889) was a French painter. He painted historical, classical and religious subjects in the academic style. He was also well known as a portrait painter, receiving commissions as Napoleon III’s preferred painter.
Cabanel was the son of a carpenter, and he began his apprenticeship at the Montpellier School of Fine Arts in the class of Charles Matet, curator of the Musée Fabre. Equipped with a scholarship, he moved to Paris in 1839.
Cabanel entered the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris at the age of seventeen, in 1840, where he studied with François-Édouard Picot.
After two attempts, with the paintings Cincinnatus Receiving the Ambassadors of Rome, in 1843, and Christ in the Garden of Olives, in 1844, he won the Prix de Rome scholarship, in 1845 at the age of 22. He would be a resident of the villa Medici until 1850.
Cabanel was both a history painter and a genre painter, and he evolved over the years towards romantic themes, like Albaydé (1848), inspired by Les Orientales, by Victor Hugo (1829).
He received the insignia of knight of the Legion of Honor, in 1855.
He gained more recognition with The Birth of Venus, exhibited at the Salon of 1863, and which was immediately purchased by Napoleon III for his personal collection. The acclaimed painting entered the Luxembourg Museum, in 1881, and his now held at the Musée d’Orsay, in Paris. He signed a contract with the Goupil house for the marketing of engraved reproductions of this painting. There is a smaller replica, painted in 1875 for a banker, John Wolf, now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York City. It was offered to the museum by Wolf in 1893. The classical composition embodies ideals of Academic art: a mythological subject, graceful modeling, silky brushwork, and perfected forms.
Cabanel was elected a member of the Academy of Fine Arts in the 10th chair, in 1863. He was appointed professor at the École des Beaux-arts in 1864, where he taught until his death. He was in the same year promoted to the rank of officer of the Legion of Honor.
Between 1868 and 1888, he was a member of the Salon jury seventeen times. He was elected regularly to the Salon jury and his pupils could be counted by the hundred at the Salons. Through them, Cabanel did more than any other artist of his generation to form the character of the belle époque French painting. His refusal together with William-Adolphe Bouguereau to allow the impressionist painter Édouard Manet, and other painters. to exhibit their work in the Salon of 1863 led to the Salon des Refusés by the French government. Cabanel won the Great Medal of Honour at the Salons of 1865, 1867, and 1878.
However, he intervened in 1881 during the presentation of Pertuiset, Le chasseur de lions, by Édouard Manet, and defended it by saying: “Gentlemen, there is not one among us who is capable of doing a head like that in the open air!”
At the Universal Exhibition of 1867, he was awarded the Knight’s Cross of the First Class of the Order of Merit of Saint Michael of Bavaria, following his Paradise Lost, commissioned for the Maximilianeum, in Munich, by Ludwig II of Bavaria.
He was promoted to the rank of Commander of the Legion of Honor in 1884, and was elected associate of the Royal Academy of Belgium on January 6, 1887.
He died on January 24, 1889 in his hotel at 14 rue Alfred de Vigny, in the 8th arrondissement of Paris. His funeral took place in Paris, on January 26, 1889, in the Saint-Philippe du Roule church, then his body was transported to Montpellier, where it was buried in the Saint-Lazare on January 28, 1889. A monument was erected to him in 1892 by the architect Jean Camille Formigé, decorated with a marble bust by Paul Dubois and a sculpture, Regret, by Antonin Mercié.
Nationality:
French
Dates:
September 28, 1823 – January 23, 1889
Occupation:
Painter
Schools attended:
École des Beaux-arts, Montpellier School of Fine Arts
Taught at:
Student of:
François-Édouard Picot, Charles Matet
Teacher of:
Rodolfo Amoedo
Joseph Aubert
Henry Bacon
George Randolph Barse
Alexandre Jean-Baptiste Brun
Jean-Eugène Buland
Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant
Vlaho Bukovac
Gaston Bussière
Louis Capdevielle
Eugène Carrière
Eugène Chigot
Jacqueline Comerre-Paton
Fernand Cormon
Pierre Auguste Cot
Kenyon Cox
Édouard Debat-Ponsan
Gabriel-Charles Deneux
Louis Deschamps
Émile Friant
François Guiguet
Jules Bastien-Lepage
François Flameng
Charles Fouqueray
Frank Fowler
Henri Gervex
Charles Lucien Léandre
Max Leenhardt
Henri Le Sidaner
Aristide Maillol
Édouard-Antoine Marsal
João Marques de Oliveira
Jan Monchablon
Georges Moreau de Tours
Henri-Georges Morisset
Henri Pinta
Henri Regnault
Iakovos Rizos
Louis Royer
Jean-Jacques Scherrer
António Silva Porto
Edward Stott
Joseph-Noël Sylvestre
Solomon Joseph Solomon
Paul Tavernier
José Ferraz de Almeida Júnior
Étienne Terrus
Adolphe Willette
Group / Movement:
Légion d’honneur, Royal Academy of Belgium