| Louis
Gabriel Eugène Isabey (French, 1803-1886)
The son of the miniaturist Jean-Baptiste Isabey, Eugène
Isabey embarked on a career as a landscape painter. In 1823 he
produced some lithographs for
his father’s Voyage en Italie par J.B. Isabey en 1822, and the following
year spent some time painting at Le Havre. He made his debut at the Salon of
1824, exhibiting a number of seascapes and winning a first-class medal in the
category of genre and marine painting. It was at about this time that he met
EugËne Delacroix and Richard Parkes Bonington, both of whom were to prove
influential on the young artist. From Bonington, Isabey adopted the practice
of drawing his watercolours on a light or white ground, instead of the dark ground
commonly used in France at the time. The three artists traveled together to England
in 1825, where Isabey was able to study the work of Turner and the English watercolourists.
On his return to France he settled in Normandy, where he made countless sketches
and paintings of the coastal scenery. He also befriended another young artist,
Paul Huet, who shared his penchant for working en plein-air. Like Huet, Isabey
exhibited a number of views of Normandy at the Salon of 1827, with some success.
Two years later he contributed illustrations to the Voyage pittoresque et romantiques
de l’ancienne France, published by Charles Nodier, Alphonse de Cailleux
and Isadore Taylor in 26 volumes between 1820 and 1863. As a painter, he made
a speciality of marine views, and in 1833 his painting of a Harbour at Low Tide
was purchased by the State. In later years Isabey received several official commissions
and produced a number of grandiose history pictures, typified by the Return of
the Ashes of Napoleon at Versailles. He never lost his interest in the watercolour
medium, however, and was a founder member of the Société des Aquarellistes
FranÁais, established in 1879. His work also provides a link between the
Romantic tradition and that of the pre-Impressionists; he may have come into
contact with Eugène Boudin as early as 1844, while on a visit to Holland
in 1846 he met Johan Barthold Jongkind, who later became his student in Paris.
Among Isabey’s other pupils were Eugène Ciceri, Adolphe Hervier
and Félix Ziem.
To Artist Showroom
|
