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for LEOPOLD FLAMENG
LEOPOLD FLAMENG
(b Paris, 6 Dec 1856; d Paris, 28 Feb 1923).
French painter and draughtsman. He was the son and pupil of the engraver Leopold Flameng (1831-1911) and was taught by Alexandre Cabanel, Edmond Hédouin and Jean-Paul Laurens. He first exhibited at the Salon in 1873, working initially as a history and portrait painter. He produced several large historical compositions such as Conquerors of the Bastille (1881; Rouen, Mus. B.-A.), painted in an academic style characteristic of the Third Republic. He also worked as a decorative painter, producing nine panels for the great staircase of the Sorbonne in Paris depicting the foundation of the university and the history of French literature, for example St Louis Delivering the Founding Charter to Robert de Sorbon (1887) and Moralists of the Court of Louis XIV: La Rochefoucauld and Molière (both in situ). He decorated the ceiling over the staircase in the Opéra Comique in Paris with paintings that owe something to Degas, such as Tragedy and Dance (1897; both in situ), but more to Boucher (Comedy Pursuing the Vices). He contributed to the design of the Salle des Fêtes at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900 with three enormous compositions, Silk and Wool, the Decorative Arts and the Chemical Industries (all destr.). Flameng also produced ceiling paintings for the buffet at the Gare de Lyon (in situ) in Paris as well as wall and ceiling paintings for numerous public and private buildings, including the Hôtel des Invalides in Paris (now in Paris, Mus. Armée), the Grolier Club in New York and the Charitonenko Palace in Moscow (both in situ). In 1903 he collaborated with Léon Bonnat, P.-A.-J. Dagnan-Bouveret, Gustave Colin, Léon Glaize, Charles Lapostolet, Joseph Layraud and Tony Robert-Fleury on the decoration of the Salon des Arts in the Hôtel de Ville in Paris, contributing Music, a panel painted in a Symbolist style.
Flameng devoted himself almost exclusively to portrait painting in his later years, producing works with an 18th-century flavour such as Mme Flameng, the Artist's Wife (1893; Paris, Louvre). In 1894 he travelled to Russia, where his works were well received; Tsar Nicholas II bought four scenes from the life of Napoleon Bonaparte (1894-6; St Petersburg, Hermitage). Mme Winterfeld (1910; Nice, Mus. B.-A.) reveals his skill as a portrait painter, with its stylized grace of composition, latent eroticism (the model, covered in jewels, is voluptuously removing her glove) and fluidity of brushwork. Flameng also worked as an illustrator, producing 100 drawings for an edition of the complete works of Victor Hugo (Paris, 1886). He was appointed professor at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1905 and became President of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1910.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Thieme-Becker
Edouard-Joseph: Dictionnaire biographique des artistes contemporains, 1910-1930, ii (Paris, 1931), pp. 35-6
A. DAGUERRE DE HUREAUX
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