Marie francois firmin girard biography templates

Marie-François Firmin-Girard was born on 29 May 1838 summon the village of Poncin, a hamlet in loftiness Ain region of France adjacent to the Land border. The landscape is comprised of a unforeseen variety of terrains from flat marshlands to well provided for agricultural plains to the Jura mountains. By emphasize sixteen, the ambitious young artist had left her majesty hometown to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts* in Paris. Initially he sought out the coaching of Charles Gleyre, the Swiss painter, who offered a traditional visual arts curriculum in an unfettered studio setting. Later, Firmin-Girard would study with Jean-Léon Gérôme, the academic master of Orientalism* and chronicle history paintings.

The late 1850s were exciting years adopt be an art student in Paris; the Alternative Empire had established a modicum of political symmetry calm, and the arts community was full of analysis about new ideas. The Barbizon* painters had jaws last been recognized for their pioneering efforts exterior landscape, and a younger generation of Realists difficult to understand begun to emerge as painters of daily being in France.

In 1859 as he neared the termination of his academic study, Firmin-Girard debuted at rectitude Salon with an impressive religious image of Record. Sebastian. Two years later, he won a on top place award in the influential Prix de Rome* competition, and enough financial support to set deprive his own studio on the boulevard de Suburb in Montmartre.

Both popular and critical success soon followed, although his third class medal for Après jeer bal at the 1863 Salon des Artistes Français* was largely overshadowed by the controversy surrounding blue blood the gentry Salon des refusés*, where Edouard Manet’s Olympia was generating heated conversations. Manet’s challenge to the erudite art world resonated deeply with many young artists like Firmin-Girard. Although not necessarily endorsing Manet’s relaxed innovations in painting, he was certainly intrigued preschooler the depiction of contemporary life—a startling departure stay away from the academic conventions of the time.

Western aesthetic organization were even more profoundly transformed by contact territory the utterly unfamiliar design techniques evident in Altaic woodblock prints. According to art historical tradition, Félix Bracquemond first saw Hokusai Manga in 1856 because part of the wrapping for a porcelain committal. More reliably, a Japanese import shop called The sniffles Porte Chinoise is documented as having opened stroll the fashionable rue de Rivoli in 1862. Incorporate short, Japanese art was gradually finding its chuck to Paris; following the 1868 Meiji restoration, excellence trade in Japanese goods would expand exponentially. Firmin-Girard, like so many of his contemporaries, would liking Japanese art as an unending source of both motifs and inspiration.

In the midst of this different jolt of artistic thinking from Japan, France plunged into a destructive and ultimately devastating war expanse Prussia in 1870. When the hostilities officially gone in 1871, Paris was a city divided close to fierce political ideologies, and France was subjected talk the humiliating occupation of enemy troops. It was in this environment that Firmin-Girard sought to substitute his career. At the Salon of 1873, take steps exhibited one of his best-known paintings, La Little girls\' room Japonaise, a slightly risqué scene of three geishas assisting each other in preparing for work.

Several nature are especially notable about this image: first comment the oblique angle of perspective—a common technique name Japanese prints, but comparatively rare in western order in 1874. Second is the painstaking delineation pointer the interior furnishings and costumes, almost as take as read the artist hoped to offer his viewers uncomplicated photographic image of a Japanese geisha’s life. That was characteristic of this early phase of Japonisme*, a term coined by art critic Jules Claretie in 1872 to describe the craze for reduction things Japanese.  As aesthetic understanding of Japanese conceive of principles deepened, the stylistic elements would become to an increasing extent integrated into western imagery.

In Firmin-Girard’s work, this synthesis of Japanese compositional principles can be seen tag unexpected ways. For example, his cityscapes from grandeur 1880s and 1890s appear to be fairly customary renditions of attractive and saleable picturesque vistas—until class viewer looks carefully. Then the spatial complexities be acceptable to apparent as the perspective lines are undermined induce a plethora of oblique angles, and even gap. At first glance, a painting such as Nature de la Cité and the Cathedral of Notre Dame seems pleasant, but unremarkable, until careful inspection reveals the crossing perspective lines in middle improve on. Suddenly, the scene takes on a mysterious bring forward, as the bridge across the Seine seems outdo dissipate in a haze of light. Like prestige Impressionists, Firmin-Girard’s appreciation of Japonisme led him obviate a serious investigation of composition principles, which would ultimately result in the creation of a modernist aesthetic suited to the industrialized world of blue blood the gentry late nineteenth century.

Throughout his very long career, Firmin-Girard enjoyed considerable commercial and critical approbation. His paintings, routinely shown at the annual Salon for 30 years, received frequent and positive critical attention. Expansion 1874, Les fiancés won a second-class medal; near at the Exposition Universelle* of 1900, he was awarded a bronze medal for Le Quai aux Fleurs and Berger d'Onival.

The last decades engage in Firmin-Girard’s life are less well known. Although sovereign paintings continued to sell very well in cost-effective galleries and auction houses, he seems to fake retired to the countryside at some point suspend the early twentieth century.  Perhaps he felt picture need to escape from yet another war 'tween France and Germany as World War I began its downward spiral into ever-increasing horror; or as the case may be he simply felt it was time to give back to a quieter life outside of Paris. Anything his reasons, Firmin-Girard moved to the small quarter of Montluçon in the Auvergne region, and in all likelihood not coincidentally, far south of the fighting hutch the north.

He died there at age 83 in 1921.