01 Painting, Streets of Paris, Eugène Galien-Laloue’s Arc de Triomphe, Part 35 – With Footnotes

Eugène Galien-Laloue, 1854-1941, FRENCH
Arc de Triomphe

Gouache and watercolour over pencil on paper
18.5 by 30cm., 7¼ by 11¾in.
Private collection

Estimate at 5,000 – 7,000 USD in  October 2021

The Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile is one of the most famous monuments in Paris, standing at the western end of the Champs-Élysées at the center of Place Charles de Gaulle, formerly named Place de l’Étoile — the étoile or “star” of the juncture formed by its twelve radiating avenues.

Inspired by the Roman Arch of Titus, the Arc de Triomphe has an overall height of 50 metres (164 ft), width of 45 m (148 ft), and depth of 22 m (72 ft), while its large vault is 29.19 m (95.8 ft) high and 14.62 m (48.0 ft) wide. The smaller transverse vaults are 18.68 m (61.3 ft) high and 8.44 m (27.7 ft) wide. Three weeks after the Paris victory parade in 1919 (marking the end of hostilities in World War I), Charles Godefroy flew his Nieuport biplane under the arch’s primary vault, with the event captured on newsreel.

Paris’s Arc de Triomphe was the tallest triumphal arch until the completion of the Monumento a la Revolución in Mexico City in 1938. More on L’Arc de Triomphe

Eugène Galien-Laloue (1854–1941) was a French artist of French-Italian parents and was born in Paris on December 11, 1854. He was a populariser of street scenes, usually painted in autumn or winter. His paintings of the early 1900s accurately represent the era in which he lived: a happy, bustling Paris, la Belle Époque, with horse-drawn carriages, trolley cars and its first omnibuses. Galien-Laloue’s works are valued not only for their contribution to 20th-century art, but for the actual history, which they document. His work can be seen at the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Louvier; Musée des Beaux-Arts, La Rochelle; Mulhouse, France.

A typical Galien-Laloue painting depicts sidewalks and avenues crowded with people or tourists mingling before the capital’s monuments. He also painted the landscapes of Normandy and Seine-et-Marne, as well as military scenes he was commissioned to produce in 1914. The Republic of France selected Galien-Laloue to work as a ‘war artist,’ both during the Franco-Prussian War and World War I, chiefly in watercolor. More on Eugène Galien-Laloue

Please visit my other blogs: Art CollectorMythologyMarine ArtPortrait of a Lady, The OrientalistArt of the Nude and The Canals of VeniceMiddle East Artists365 Saints365 Days, and Biblical Icons, also visit my Boards on Pinterest

Images are copyright of their respective owners, assignees or others. Some Images may be subject to copyright

I don’t own any of these images – credit is always given when due unless it is unknown to me. if I post your images without your permission, please tell me.

I do not sell art, art prints, framed posters or reproductions. Ads are shown only to compensate the hosting expenses.

If you enjoyed this post, please share with friends and family.

Thank you for visiting my blog and also for liking its posts and pages.

Please note that the content of this post primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online.

12 Paintings of the streets of Paris in the 19th C, by Jean Béraud, Eugène Galien-Laloue, Edouard Henri Leon Cortès, Antoine Blanchard, Gustave Loiseau, with footnotes

Gustave Loiseau, 1865 – 1935
Rue Clignancourt, Paris, on 14th July, ca. 1925

Oil on canvas
23 7/8 by 19 5/8 in., 60.8 by 50 cm
El Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza

Here Gustave Loiseau chose to paint an area of Paris he had been familiar with for a long time. In 1887, when he had decided to devote himself to painting, Gustave Loiseau had settled in Montmartre, in rue de Ravignan. Rue Clignancourt is only a few steps away, at the foot of the hill it borders to the east. To describe it, the artist placed himself in the corner of the street and of boulevard de Rochechouart, where a brasserie now stands. The area, which is always very busy due to the nearby Tati stores, has changed very little. At the crossroads visible in the foreground, the cars have become more numerous than the strollers, and on the right a newspaper kiosk has replaced the old roundabout.

But here again we can appreciate the precision with which the artist observed and recorded the topography of the area. We can easily recognise every detail transcribed on the canvas: the slightly chaotic succession of building façades of different periods and styles, as well as the chimneys and skylights that punctuate the buildings, are immediately identifiable. Flags liven up the scene and dot it with the colours blue, white and red. The crowd has invaded the boulevard, and the bright and clear light is that of a summer day in Paris. More on this painting

French Post-Impressionist painter Gustave Loiseau is best remembered for his scenes of evocative landscapes and bustling Paris streets. The artist used latticed brushstrokes to depict fleeting moments, blending the Impressionist pursuit of naturalistic depiction with a more modern desire for painterly expression.

Loiseau was born on October 3, 1865 in Paris. In his youth, he was apprenticed to a decorator, but soon received an inheritance from his grandmother, which allowed him to pursue his artistic passions. He enrolled at the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, where he studied life drawing, but left after a year after quarreling with an instructor. He set out for the riparian vistas of Pont-Aven, where he befriended other artists including Paul Gauguin and Émile Bernard. There, he developed his signature approach to landscape painting, which involved painting directly from nature (en plein air) and using an idiosyncratic cross-hatching technique (en treillis) to convey subtleties of light and atmosphere. Loiseau took part in the 1890 Impressionists exhibition and from 1893 showed at the Salon des Indépendants. While Paris remained his home and his most frequent subject, he returned to Pont-Aven several times, and also visited coastal Normandy and the various tributaries of the Seine. In the 1920s, he added still lives of flowers, fruits and fish to his repertoire. He died in Paris on October 10, 1935.

Today, Loiseau’s work is represented in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid and the Tokyo Fuji Art Museum, among many other world institutions. More on Gustave Loiseau

Please follow link for full post

%d bloggers like this: