Victor Lagye | Genre painter

Victor Lagye (20 June 1825, in Ghent - 1 September 1896, in Antwerp) was a Belgian painter🎨 and illustrator best known for his genre paintings🎨 and history scenes.

He participated in various decorative programs commissioned by the Belgian government. In his later years he was active in art education.

Victor Lagye was a painter whose main subject matter was portraits and genre paintings.

He started as a typical representative of the late-Romantic style as developed in Belgium by pupils and teachers of the Antwerp Academy.

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres | Life and artworks

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres - Pittore, nato a Montauban il 29 agosto 1780, morto a Parigi il 14 gennaio 1867. In un primo tempo allievo del padre, decoratore e miniatore non privo di talento; giunto a Parigi poco prima della rivoluzione di Termidoro (agosto 1799) entrò nello studio di L. David, occupato allora con il celebre quadro Le Sabine.

L'Ingres si fece presto notare dal maestro e pare abbia collaborato al ritratto della signora Récamier; tutta la vita rimase fedele al grande riformatore della pittura, pur rimproverandogli l'enfasi, l'abuso dell'imitazione della statuaria antica, la mancanza di spontaneità. Sin dalla giovinezza l'Ingres, pur dotato di un gusto squisito e di un sentimento musicale della linea, fu un deciso realista e nella sua opera fuse in modo unico l'arabesco decorativo e il senso voluttuoso della vita.

Claude Monet | Argenteuil, Late Afternoon, 1872

From: Museum Barberini, Potsdam

Between 1871-1878 Claude Monet lived in Argenteuil – an idyllic suburb on the Seine that was noticeably transformed by industrialization in the vicinity of the capital. The promenade directs the viewer’s gaze into the distance, where a traditional villa in the style of the seventeenth century is flanked by towering factory chimneys.

In the light of the late afternoon, the sky and river glow in nuances of delicate pink and yellow.

Other painters such as Gustave Caillebotte, Édouard Manet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley were also fascinated by this location, and over the course of the 1870s it became a center for the growing Impressionist movement, whose members rejected the Salon aesthetic and the conventions of academic painting with increasing self-confidence.

Stylistically, the years in Argenteuil were a turning point in Monet’s career: the matte, earthy tones of his early work gave way to the dynamic brushwork and more intense color of his mature Impressionist idion.

George Inness (1825-1894)

Van Gogh | Fishing in spring the Pont de Clichy (Asnieres), 1887

In this canvas, Vincent uses pointillist like dabs and his own developing thick dashes of yellows, lavender and greens to portray a locale commonly chosen by the impressionists, the Seine around Asnieres.

A fisherman with blue pants, yellow brown shirt and black hat with pole resting in his right hand on his black outlined leg is fishing in the Seine below with the Pont de Clichy in the background.

The Seine is depicted in lateral strokes of blue from cobalt to sky blue in the foreground and lighter blues to white beyond the fisherman.

Marc Chagall | Cirque, Parigi 1967

Marc Chagall: "Per me un circo è uno spettacolo di magia che appare e scompare come un mondo. Un circo è inquietante. È profondo.

Questi pagliacci, cavalieri senza sella ed acrobati si trovano a loro agio nelle mie visioni.

Come mai?

Perché sono così commosso dal loro trucco e dalle loro smorfie?

Con loro posso muovermi verso nuovi orizzonti.

Attirato dai loro colori e dal loro trucco, posso sognare di dipingere nuove distorsioni psichiche. È una parola magica, circo, un gioco di danza senza tempo dove lacrime e sorrisi, il gioco di braccia e gambe prendono la forma di una grande arte".

Achille Laugé | Étude de Chrysanthèmes

The son of wealthy farmers, French Neo-Impressionist painter Achille Laugé (1861-1944) was born in Arzens in the Aude region of southern France.

In 1878 his parents sent him to study at a pharmacy in Toulouse, however, against their wishes he enrolled at the school of the Beaux-Arts where he met the artist Bourdelle.