Charles Gleyre

{"Id":230,"Name":"Charles Gleyre","Biography":"\u003Cstrong\u003EGLEYRE, MARC CHARLES GABRIEL (1806-1874)\u003C/strong\u003E, French painter, of Swiss origin, was born at Chevilly in the canton of Vaud on the 2nd of May 1806. His father and mother died while he was yet a boy of some eight or nine years of ago; and he was brought up by an uncle at Lyons, who sent him to the industrial school of that city. Going up to Paris a lad of seventeen or nineteen, he spent four years in close artistic study in \u003Ca href=\u0022/asp/database/art.asp?aid=2412\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022 class=\u0022link\u0022\u003EHersents\u003C/a\u003E studio, in Suisses academy, in the galleries of the Louvre. To this period of laborious application succeeded four years of meditative inactivity in Italy, where he became acquainted with \u003Ca href=\u0022/asp/database/art.asp?aid=610\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022 class=\u0022link\u0022\u003EHorace Vernet\u003C/a\u003E and \u003Ca href=\u0022/asp/database/art.asp?aid=421\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022 class=\u0022link\u0022\u003ELeopold Robert\u003C/a\u003E; and six years more were consumed in adventurous wanderings in Greece, Egypt, Nubia and Syria. At Cairo he was attacked with ophthalmia, and in the Lebanon he was struck down by fever; and he returned to Lyons in shattered health. On his recovery he proceeded to Paris, and, fixing his modest studio in the rue de Universit, began carefully to work out the conceptions which had been slowly shaping themselves in his mind. Mention is made of two decorative panels \u003Cu\u003EDiana leaving the Bath\u003C/u\u003E, and a \u003Cu\u003EYoung Nubian\u003C/u\u003E as almost the first fruits of his genius; but these did not attract public attention till long after, and the painting by which he practically opened his artistic career was the \u003Cu\u003EApocalyptic Vision of St John\u003C/u\u003E, sent to the Salon of 1840. This was followed in 1843 by \u003Cu\u003EEvening\u003C/u\u003E, which at the time received a medal of the second class, and afterwards became widely popular under the title of the \u003Cu\u003ELost Illusions\u003C/u\u003E. It represents a poet seated on the bank of a river, with drooping head and wearied frame, letting his lyre slip from a careless hand, and gazing sadly at a bright company of maidens whose song is slowly dying from his ear as their boat is borne slowly from his sight.\u003Cbr\u003E\u003Cbr\u003EIn spite of the success which attended these first ventures, Gleyre retired from public competition, and spent the rest of his life in quiet devotion to his own artistic ideals, neither seeking the easy applause of the crowd, nor turning his art into a means of aggrandizement; and wealth. After 1845, when he exhibited the \u003Cu\u003ESeparation of the Apostles\u003C/u\u003E, he contributed nothing to the Salon except the \u003Cu\u003EDance of the Bacchantes\u003C/u\u003E in 1849. Yet he laboured steadily and was abundantly productive. He had an infinite capacity of taking pains, and when asked by what method he attained to such marvellous perfection of workmanship, he would reply, \u0022En y pensant toujours\u0022 (\u0022By always thinking of it\u0022). A long series of years often intervened between the first conception of a piece and its embodiment, and years not unfrequently between the first and the final stage of the embodiment itself. A landscape was apparently finished; even his fellow artists would consider it done; Gleyre alone was conscious that he had not found his sky. Happily for French art this high-toned laboriousness became influential on a large number of Gleyre\u0027s younger contemporaries; for when \u003Ca href=\u0022/asp/database/art.asp?aid=49\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022 class=\u0022link\u0022\u003EDelaroche\u003C/a\u003E gave up his studio of instruction he recommended his pupils to apply to Gleyre, who at once agreed to give them lessons twice a week, and characteristically refused to take any fee or reward. By instinct and principle he was a confirmed celibate: Fortune, talent, health, he had everything; but he was married, was his lamentation over a friend. Though he lived in almost complete retirement from public life, he took a keen interest in politics, and was a voracious reader of political journals. For a time, indeed, under Louis Philippe, his studio had been the rendezvous of a sort of liberal club. To the lastamid all the disasters that befell his countryhe was hopeful of the future, la raison finira bien par avoir raison. It was while on a visit to the Retrospective Exhibition, opened on behalf of the exiles from Alsace and Lorraine, that he died suddenly on the 5th of May 1874. He left unfinished the \u003Cu\u003EEarthly Paradise\u003C/u\u003E, a noble picture, which Tame has described as a dream of innocence, of happiness and of beauty: Adam and Eve standing in the sublime and joyous landscape of a paradise enclosed in mountains, a worthy counterpart to the \u003Cu\u003EEvening\u003C/u\u003E.\u003Cbr\u003E\u003Cbr\u003EAmong the other productions of his genius are the \u003Cu\u003EDeluge\u003C/u\u003E, which represents two angels speeding above the desolate earth, from which the destroying waters have just begun to retire, leaving visible behind them the ruin they have wrought; the \u003Cu\u003EBattle of the Lemanus\u003C/u\u003E, a piece of elaborate design, crowded but not cumbered with figures, and giving fine expression to the movements of the various bands of combatants and fugitives; the \u003Cu\u003EProdigal Son\u003C/u\u003E, in which the artist has ventured to add to the parable the new element of mothers love, greeting the repentant youth with a welcome that shows that the mothers heart thinks less of the repentance than of the return; \u003Cu\u003ERuth and Boaz\u003C/u\u003E; \u003Cu\u003EUlysses and Nausicaa\u003C/u\u003E; \u003Cu\u003EHercules at the feet of Omphale\u003C/u\u003E; the \u003Cu\u003EYoung Athenian\u003C/u\u003E, or, as it is popularly called, \u003Cu\u003ESappho\u003C/u\u003E; \u003Cu\u003EMinerva and the Nymphs\u003C/u\u003E; \u003Cu\u003EVenus and Adonis\u003C/u\u003E; \u003Cu\u003EDaphnis and Chlo\u0026euml;\u003C/u\u003E; and \u003Cu\u003ELove and the Parcae\u003C/u\u003E. Nor must it be omitted that he left a considerable number of drawings and watercolours, and that we are indebted to him for a number of portraits, among which is the sad face of Ileine, engraved in the \u003Cu\u003ERevue des deux mondes\u003C/u\u003E for April 1852. In Clement\u0027s catalogue of his works there are 683 entries, including sketches and studies.\u003Cbr\u003E\u003Cbr\u003ESee Fritz Berthoud in \u003Cu\u003EBibliothique universelle de Genive\u003C/u\u003E (1874); Albert de Montet, \u003Cu\u003EDid. biographique des Genevois et des Vaudois\u003C/u\u003E (1877); and \u003Cu\u003EVie de Charles Gleyre\u003C/u\u003E (1877), written by his friend, Charles Clement, and illustrated by 30 plates from his works.\u003Cbr\u003E\u003Cbr\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003E\u003Cu\u003ESource:\u003C/u\u003E\u003C/strong\u003E Entry on the artist in the \u003Ca href=\u0022http://7.1911encyclopedia.org/G/GL/GLEYRE_MARC_CHARLES_GABRIEL.htm\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022\u003E1911 Edition Encyclopedia\u003C/a\u003E.\u003Cp\u003E","Awards":null,"HasAlbums":false,"HasPortraits":true,"HasRelationships":true,"HasArticles":false,"HasDepictedPlaces":false,"HasLetters":false,"HasLibraryItems":true,"HasProducts":false,"HasSignatures":false,"HasVideos":false,"HasMapLocations":true,"TotalArtworks":42}