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Thomas Couture
"Knowing how to paint and to use one's colors rightly has not any connection with originality. This originality consists in properly expressing your own impressions." -- Thomas Couture
1815-1879
Education - École des Beaux-Arts
Thomas Couture Biography and Information
Thomas Couture not only
handsome and dashing but also a brilliant and innovative painter. He was
driven to succeed from a young age and devoted his life to teaching art
and creating splendid masterpieces. A true master of Academic
Classicism, Couture, had an extraordinary way of revealing a
subjects sensual, "natural" qualities and yet, at the same time, create
in the viewer an almost theatrical feeling of high drama. Historical
accuracy, blithe elegance, and an ethereal atmosphere characterize his
brilliant painting style. Thomas Couture's work varies from sensual
mythological themes that are often distinguished by sophisticated
brushwork, to self-consciously romantic themes of mysterious unrequited
love. He was known as the quintessential "artiste" and encouraged the
elegant tastes and decadent diversions of his wealthy patrons.
Description of the Academic
Classicism Painting style
Followers of this movement strictly fowllowed the rigid academic standards
set forth by the
French Académie des Beaux-Arts, Academic
Classicism attempted to merge both
Neoclassicism and
Romanticism
styles into one perfect
style. Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky, one of the greatest painters of
the style stated, "The movement of natural elements cannot be captured
by the brush: to paint lightning, a gust of wind, or the splash of a
wave from nature is inconceivable."
Academic Classicism Painting style is characterized by adhering to a strict manner of painting, following narrow compositional rules and delicacy of color. The atmospheric effects are sumptuouly luminescent. According to art historian, Walter Pater "To produce such effects at all requires all the resources of painting, with its power of indirect expression, of subordinate but significant detail, its atmosphere, its foregrounds and backgrounds."
Subject matter often used in
Rococo art
such historical and genre pictures was fashionable once again.
This style favored interpretations of
Greek,
Roman
and
Renaissance
themes. Imagery often centered around
Biblical stories, Arthurian legends and mythology.
According to Solomon
Gessner, the great German painter and art historian, "By studying the
works of Greek sculptors the painter can attain the sublimest
conceptions of beauty, and learn what must be added to nature in order
to give to the imitation dignity and propriety.
Famous Painters of Academic Classicists Movement
Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky, 1817-1900
Adolphe-William Bouguereau1825-1905
Charles Emile August Carolus-Duran, 1837-1917
Leon Francois Comerre, 1850-1916
Pierre-Auguste Cot 1837-1883
Thomas Couture, 1815-1879
Paul Delaroche 1797-1856
Eugene Fromentin, 1820-1876
Jean Leon Gerome, 1824-1904
Jean-Paul Laurens1838-1921
Adolphe Alexandre Lesrel, 1839-1929
Luc Olivier Merson, 1846-1920
Hans Makart, 1840 - 1884
Giulio Rosati, 1858-1917
Franz Xavier Winterhalter, 1805-1873
William Clarke Wontner, 1857-1930
Key Descriptive Words
and Phrases associated with the
Academic Classicism Painting Style -
Classicism, rigid Academic standards, ancient Greece, Rome, Herculaneum,
Pompeii, neoclassicism, romantic movement, European academies, French
Académie des Beaux-Arts, Romanticism, academism, academicism, accademic
training, highly romantic, inspired by historical and mythological
stories, L'art pompier, the Grand Tour, eclecticism, classical realism,
historicism, 19th century, syncretism, academician, Victorian Classicism
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