FRANCOIS LOUIS FRANCAIS

Artist Info

Français, François-Louis

(b Plombières-les-Bains, Vosges, 17 Nov 1814; d Plombières-les-Bains, 18 May 1897).

French painter and printmaker. After attending several courses in drawing in Plombières-les-Bains, he went to Paris at the age of 14 to study. He first worked as a copyist, produced caricatures and drew from models at the Académie Suisse. In 1831 he decided to study painting and completed his first landscapes, painting mainly in the environs of Paris and at Meudon with Paul Huet, who was his adviser for several years. In 1834 he entered the workshop of Jean Gigoux and met Henri Baron, who remained his faithful friend. He also studied at the Louvre where he developed a lifelong admiration for the work of Claude. From 1834 he lived at Barbizon, and after 1835 he often painted in the Forest of Fontainebleau, where he met Louis Cabat and also Corot, who became his adviser and introduced him to Théodore-Caruelle d'Aligny. Français also made the acquaintance of Narcisse Diaz and of the landscape painter Auguste-Paul-Charles Anastasi (1820-89), who became his friend. In 1837 he exhibited for the first time at the Salon in Paris, showing Under the Willows (1837; Tours, Mus. B.-A.), a composition in which the figures were painted by Baron. He exhibited regularly at the Salon until 1896. Between 1836 and 1840 his style was above all a skilful but eclectic mixture of various contemporary trends in landscape painting. He also took up printmaking early in his career, and in 1835 he produced some engravings for Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's La Chaumière indienne and for Alain-René Lesage's Gil Blas. After 1838 his lithographic production was considerable and included such important commissions as that to illustrate Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's novel Paul et Virginie. With his friends Baron and Célestin Nanteuil (1813-73), he produced Les Artistes anciens et modernes (3 vols; 1848-62), a collection of lithographs after paintings by contemporary artists. Among the prints were those done after Corot's Landscape, Sunset (1840; Metz, Mus A. & Hist.), Diaz's Bathers (1847) and several of his own paintings.

He travelled and painted in such regions as Marly, Vaux-de-Cernay, Saint-Cloud and Sèvres, where he painted with Constant Troyon. From 1850 he also frequented Honfleur and, with Corot, Courbet, Eugène Boudin and Johan Barthold Jongkind, painted the town and its environs (e.g. Sunset near Honfleur, 1859). In 1852 he travelled to Crémieu with Corot, Charles-François Daubigny and Auguste Ravier.

PRINTS

with H. Baron and C. Nanteuil: Les Artistes anciens et modernes, 3 vols (Paris, 1848-62)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. Gros: François-Louis Français: Causeries et souvenirs par un de ses élèves (Paris, 1902)

P. Miquel: Le Paysage français au XIXe siècle, 1824-1874: L'Ecole de la nature, iii (Maurs-la-Jolie, 1975), pp. 608-45

François-Louis Français, Plombières-les-Bains, 1814-1897: Illustrateur romantique (exh. cat. by R. Conilleau, Plombières-les-Bains, Mus. Louis Français, 1981)

Aquarelles, dessins et gravures de François-Louis Français (exh. cat., Région Lorraine, 1982-3)

Tradition and Revolution in French Art, 1700-1880: Paintings and Drawings from Lille (exh. cat., London, N.G., 1993)

LAURENCE PAUCHET-WARLOP

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