michielkersten

[michielkersten]

There were relatively few female artists in France in the 19th century. About 10% of the artists were women. Although the École des Beaux-Arts was not open to women, they could exhibit at the official Salon, provided the jury judged their work positively. Despite all these hurdles, a few women achieved star status in the 19th century, such as the animal painter Rosa Bonheur. Another example of an extremely successful artist was the originally Swiss sculptress and painter Adèle d'Affry (pseudonym Marcello) (1836-1879). Trained as a sculptress in the 1850s at the studio of Heinrich Max Imhof in Rome, she mainly made portrait busts and mythological figures in an academic, classical style. She was the favorite of Empress Eugénie Bonaparte. In the 1870s she had contact with Berthe Morisot. In 1874 Marcello painted a portrait of Berthe in the typical academic style of the time: very precise and without visible brushstrokes. Very different from the work of Berthe Morisot from that time, who now paints with loose, impressionistic brushwork.

MARCELLO (Adèle d’Affry, duchesse de Castiglione Colonna) Portrait of Berthe Morisot, 1875, oil on canvas, 165 x 113 cm Fribourg, Musée d’art et d'histoire

[michielkersten]

The unkown impressionists 1 | Adolphe-Félix Cals (1810-1880). Invited by Claude Monet Cals took part in the impressionist exhibitions of 1874, 1876, 1877 en 1879. The last ten years of his life were his most productive, especially when he moved to Honfleur on the Normandy coast in 1873. His late work is light in tone, but without the specific colorful shading so characteristic of the work of Monet and Pissarro.

Adolphe-Félix Cals, Cliffs near Dieppe, 1862, oil on canvas, 20.7 x 31.7 cm, , 1862, Cambridge, UK, Fitzwilliam Museum