Pascal Jean Dagnan-Bouveret

A painter of mythological, allegorical and religious subjects, genre scenes and portraits, Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret started his artistic career in 1869 with his admission to the Fine Arts Academy in Paris, where he initially worked in the studio of Alexandre Cabanel. His training was temporarily interrupted by the historical events of that period, the Franco-Prussian war and the Paris Commune in 1871. In 1872, he pursued his education with the artist Jean-Leon Gérôme. Having lost his mother at the age of six, he was brought up by his grandparents within a small and wise bourgeois and provincial surrounding, attending classical studies in Melun. At a very young age he was showing high skills in drawing, and very soon he decided to devote his life to painting, refusing to join his father in his business in Brazil. The latter, furious, would cut off all allowances to his son. So, at 16, Dagnan-Bouveret moved to Paris penniless. He settled in an attic-room on the street of Faubourg Poissonnière where, by chance, he became the neighbor of Jean-Baptiste Corot. He befriended the great landscape artist who used to welcome him, giving him artistic advice that Dagnan-Bouveret would always remember.

In 1875, for the first time, he exhibited in the Salon des artistes français with Atalante, a depiction of the Greek heroine who had won a footrace against all her male competitors. This subject suited the spirit of the time, still filled with war memories, and following this presentation, Dagnan-Bouveret was commissioned by the State to decorate public buildings like the Sorbonne and the Odeon. In 1876, he received a second Prix de Rome and exhibited two allegorical paintings at the Salon, Orphée et les Bacchantes and Bacchus enfant adoré.

Soon the value of his work was recognized and he was awarded with many distinctions and prizes, such as a third medal in 1878 for Manon Lescaut, a first medal in 1880, an Honor medal in 1889 and a Grand Prix at the Exposition Universelle in 1889. Last but not least, he was knighted in 1900.

From 1878 onwards, his works would reveal a shift of subject, and La Noce chez le Photographe, now in the Fine Arts Museum in Lyon, or L'Accident, in the Walters Museum of Baltimore, are paintings which reveal a fusion of classical academic training with subject matters based on the everyday life of ordinary people. Under the influence of his very close friend, the artist Jean-Bastien Lepage, he adopted a new style of narrative painting easier to be appreciated by a wider public. Through images of rural life or of contemporary Parisian street scenes he became "a painter of modern life," offering pictures like The bird Charmer in the Tuileries Garden at the Chrysler Museum of Art, or The laundress, a painting inspired by Emile Zola's novel Nana.

Following his wedding in 1879, he approached more personal subjects through portraits of his friends, family, and mainly of his wife, a cousin of his best friend, Gustave Courtois.

His career had now launched into success when, in the years 1880-1890, he decided to add religious painting to the wide panel of his work. In 1886, he began a series of paintings based on the custom of the "Pardon Breton", a theatrical rural custom which had been illustrated by several artists travelling in Brittany at the end of the 19th century, among which were Gauguin, Paul Sérusier, Maurice Denis, and the Nabis.

In November 1900, Dagnan-Bouveret was elected to the Fine Arts Academy of the French Institute, one of the youngest painter to ever receive this honor. And, at the Universal Exhibition of 1900, his status of a respected artistic leader allowed him to showcase his paintings, including The Last Supper, in a separate installation.

Recently, his talent has been rediscovered and celebrated through an exhibition held in 2002 at The Dahesh Museum of Art in New York.