Eugène Chigot

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Eugène Chigot
Born
Eugène Henri Alexandre Chigot

(1860-11-22)22 November 1860
Valenciennes, France
Died14 July 1923(1923-07-14) (aged 62)
Paris, France
EducationÉcole nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts
Known forOil painting, Watercolours
Notable workVerrotières dans la baie,Fraipont, Juan-les-Pins.
MovementNaturalism, Post impressionism,
AwardsLégion d'honneur - Chevalier (Knight) (1895)
Legion d’honneur – Officier (Officer) (1912)[1]

Eugène Henri Alexandre Chigot (22 November 1860 – 14 July 1923) was a post impressionist French painter. A pupil of his father, the military painter

Salon d’Automne. An official military painter he painted a series of canvases in Calais and Nieuwpoort recording the destruction caused by the First World War.[2] Chigot's reputation was built on his maritime and landscape paintings that arose from his affinity to Flanders and the Pas-de-Calais. He recorded the lives of the people of Flanders placing them within a landscape of soft opalescent light. Later his paintings show traces of expressionism and a more vibrant pallette. He was also a skilled nocturne painter who travelled extensively within France, Italy and Spain.[2]

Early years

Moulins-Engilbert (1916), oil painting, 123 x 81 cm.
Moulins-Engilbert (1916), oil painting, 123 x 81 cm.
Eugène Chigot, Douarnenez, retour des pêcheurs, à la nuit tombante, (1903)
Eugène Chigot, Douarnenez, retour des pêcheurs, à la nuit tombante, (1903)

Eugène Chigot was born in

Dunkerque where he met and befriended Henri Le Sidaner, who was to become a lifelong friend and supporter.[4] His initial art training was as a pupil with his father Alphonse who operated an atelier in Valenciennes. His Father was not initially supportive of his son becoming a full-time artist but acquiesced to his son's wishes upon the intervention of his artist colleague Alfred Philippe Roll (1846 – 1919), a former pupil of Léon Bonnat.[5] In 1880, Chigot joined the atelier of Alexandre Cabanel and from 1881 until 1886 he attended the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts, at which he studied under Bonnat,Paul Vayson [fr] and Cabanel. The latter's influence on the young Chigot was considerable. Although Cabanel mainly painted in an academic style, that was dismissed derisively as L'art pompier (literally ‘Fireman art’) by some critics,[6] he was a skilled painter with a deep knowledge of nineteenth century French art, in particular impressionism and the naturalism of the Barbizon School from which Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot and Charles-François Daubigny were significant influences on Chigot.[7]
Chigot's interests in the use of colour, softness of form and in atmospheric weather were formed under Cabanel's tutelage.

The Colonie artistique d'Étaples

Following his pupillage in Paris, Chigot searched for an appropriate environment from where he could paint. Initially he travelled to the south of France and to Italy. At this stage in his career Chigot favoured ‘En plein air’ painting, a theory credited to Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes (1750–1819) that he expounded in a treatise entitled Reflections and Advice to a Student on Painting, Particularly on Landscape (1800)[8] developing the concept of landscape portraiture by which the artist paints directly onto canvas in situ within the landscape. It enabled the artist to better capture the changing details of weather and light.[8]

Eugène Chigot began exhibiting at the

Paris Salon in 1884 and would continue to do so until 1924. He was commended by the jury in 1885 for Portrait des Artistes Français, before winning a third class medal in 1887 for La pêche interrompre and a second-class medal in 1890 for the maritime painting Prière du soir. These successes came with a monetary award which funded a stay in Spain in 1887.[2] He then joined his long-term friend Henri Le Sidaner at Étaples on the Opal Coast, south of Calais[note 1] where they established an artists’ workshop and regular exhibitions that would eventually develop into a school of art, called the Villa des Roses.[9] Étaples had a tradition of en plein air painting established by Charles-François Daubigny (1817–1878), who retreated there from the outbreak of the Paris Commune in 1871 and of the local Deauville painter Eugène Boudin (1824–1898), a leading post impressionist. In the period until the start of World War I in 1914 the area attracted numerous artists from abroad particularly the United States, Australia and the British Isles.[10]

Chigot lived in the area for most of the next twenty years initially at the villa attached to his studio in Étaples. In 1893 he married Martha Colle and spent part of his honeymoon in Berck, a favoured haunt of the impressionist painter Manet.Two years later, he bought a house in the new and wealthy resort of Le Touquet.[11] The union produced a son Paul Louis, born in 1906 who was become an eminent decorated surgeon and a daughter Mathilde. The Chigots moved again in 1902 to the western Flanders town of Gravelines at the mouth of the river Aa where he built a chalet by the sea in which to paint.[11] Chigot's output during the 1890s was of a post impressionistic style, in which he depicted beach scenes with expansive skies, atmospheric seascapes, and local châteaux often with a pond in the foreground. His figures are intimate and placed within the coastal landscape. Chigot possessed the ability to convincingly paint still and moving water.[2]

Return to Paris and the Salon d’Automne

Salon d'Automne catologue 1903
Salon d'Automne catologue 1903
Fraiport (1905)
Fraiport (1905)

Eugène Chigot was an active participant in the founding of the Salon d'Automne, now an annual art exhibition held in Paris, which opened on 31 October 1903.[12] Perceived as a reaction against the conservative policies of the official Paris Salon, the new exhibition was an immediate success showcasing developments and innovations in early 20th Century art. The Salon d’Automne from its inception received strong support from artists across the artistic spectrum including some of the most established artists in France that included: Paul Cézanne, Édouard Vuillard and Auguste Rodin who featured works at the inaugural exhibition. At the 1905 exhibition Chigot exhibited three canvases featuring the Flanders landscape: Le Soir à Vormouth, Place morte, Jardin en Flanders.[13] The salon also witnessed the birth of Fauvism in 1905 and of Cubism in 1910.[note 2][14]

The febrile artistic atmosphere of the later

Côte d'Azur also painting a few canvases over the France-Italy border in Liguria notably at Dolceacqua.[2]

Peintre officiel de la Marine and war artist

Eugène Chigot Pax (1910), oil painting hanging in Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands
Eugène Chigot Pax (1910), oil painting hanging in Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands

In 1891 Chigot accepted the offer to become an official painter for the

President Felix Faure to capture the moment when Faure left France to meet the Russian Tzar and sign the Franco-Russian Alliance.[16] In 1913 Chigot's large canvas Pax was donated by the French government to hang in the newly founded Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Peace Palace in The Hague.[17]

Le port de Calais (1917), oil, on canvas,
Le port de Calais (1917), oil, on canvas,

The disruption to French cultural life of the

Great War was severe and within a short period many artists were struggling financially. In response, art critic Louis Vauxcelles organised an Exposition at George Petit's Gallery in Paris, to which Chigot contributed a painting, with the profits going to the relief of artists. At the Exposition La Triennial in 1916 he contributes four paintings : La rue fleurie à Menton, Solitude au Grand Trianon, Printemps en Flandre, la Mortola Italie.[18] On a tangible level the war had a deleterious effect on Chigot. His father Alphonse, was behind enemy lines after the fall of Valenciennes to the Germany army. As a consequence, Chigot was unable to visit his father during his final illness in October 1917. In the previous month he had moved his family to Dieppe to keep them away from the front-line.[19]

In 1917, in his capacity as an official government artist, Chigot was approached to join the French forces at

River Yser, he witnessed first hand the effects of the bombardment on the town and created a series of stark drawings and paintings of the destruction.[2]

The psychological effects of his experiences in the Great War seem to have left him in a depressed state.

Côte d'Azur, where paintings such as Juan-les-Pins (1919), displayed expressionist tendencies. He was re elected to the committee of the Salon d'Autumn in 1919 and in 1920 he received a modicum of international recognition when he had paintings exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, an exhibition that toured some of the major galleries of the United States.[2]

Eugène Chigot died in Paris on July 14, 1923. His body was returned to Valenciennes and buried beside other members of his family at the Saint-Roch cemetery (Cimetière Saint-Roch).[2]

Public collections (selected)

Examples of Chigot's work can be found at : Musée d'Orsay,[21] Musée de France d'Opale Sud,[22] Musée Antoine Vivenel, Musée du Touquet-Paris-Plage,[23] Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille[24]Petit Palais,[25] Musée Carnavalet,[26] Musée de Nantes,[27] and Indianapolis Museum of Art.[28]

Eugène Chigot has been the subject of several posthumous exhibitions (selected): at the

Salon d' Automne, Paris in 1960, the Kaplan Gallery, London in 1964 and in le Touquet at the Musée du Touquet in 2008.[29]

The Association des Amis d' Eugène Chigot in Touquet maintains his legacy.[citation needed]

Notes

  1. ^ It was whilst painting in 1911 that Édouard Lévêque, a painter from Le Touquet and a representative of the École d'Étaples came up with the notion of giving the area around Le Touquet-Paris-Plage, the somewhat enigmatic name Côte d'Opale (Opal Coast)
  2. ^ The Cubist contribution to the 1912 Salon d'Automne created scandal regarding the use of government owned buildings, including the Grand Palais, to exhibit such artwork. The indignation of the politician Jean Pierre Philippe Lampué made the front page of Le Journal, 5 October 1912. The controversy then spread to the Municipal Council of Paris, leading to a debate in the Chambre des Députés about the use of public funds to provide the venue for controversial art. The Cubists were defended by the Socialist deputy, Marcel Sembat.

Biography

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Eugène Chigot.
  • Antoine Descheemaeker- Colle (2008), Eugène Chigot, Sa Vie, Son Oevre Peint, Editions Henri, France.
    ISBN 9782917698020
    in French
  • Jean-Francoise Louis Merlet (1910), Eugène Chigot, peintre, Paris Societè de L’edition Libre.
  • Eugène Chigot, exhibition catalogue, musée Galliera, Paris, 1954.

Bibliography

Gallery (selected)

References

  1. ^ Chigot leonore.archives-nationales.culture.gouv.fr
  2. ^
    ISBN 9782917698020
    french
  3. ISBN 9780199773787
  4. ^ Edith Marcq (2019), La Côte d'Opale et ses peintres au XIX ème siècle à la fin de l'entre-deux-guerres: l'individualité de son appellation à ses diverses représentations picturales, in french
  5. ISBN 978-0-312-22971-9
    .
  6. ISBN 9780856704512
  7. ISBN 9781856695848
  8. ^
    ISBN 0520048881
  9. ^ Henri Le Sidaner, (1862-1939) et la Bretagne (2002): Exposition, Pont-Aven, Musée de Pont-Aven
  10. ^ "Philip Wilson Steer, O.M. (1860-1942)".
  11. ^ a b c "Son oeuvre". www.asso-eug-chigot.org. Archived from the original on 2 April 2012. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
  12. ^ Salon d'automne; Société du Salon d'automne, Catalogue des ouvrages de peinture, sculpture, dessin, gravure, architecture et art décoratif. Exposés au Petit Palais des Champs-Élysées, 1903
  13. ^ https://archive.org/details/cataloguedesouvr1905salo Catalogue des ouvrages de peinture, sculpture, dessin, gravure, architecture et art décoratif. Exposés au Grand Palais des Champs-Élysées, 1905
  14. ^ "Le Journal". 5 October 1912.
  15. ISBN 978-0-85745-310-5
    .
  16. ^ Hamel, Catherine. La commémoration de l’alliance franco-russe : La création d’une culture matérielle populaire, 1890-1914 (French) MA thesis, Concordia University, (2016)
  17. ^ Eugène, Chigot. "Pax (Peace)". Carnegie Foundation: Peace Palace. Retrieved 16 December 2022.
  18. ^ La Presse (Journal), 25/3/1916
  19. ^ Letter from Martha Chigot from Dieppe to Chigot (family archive) 11/9/17, curated by association des Amis d'Eugène Chigot
  20. ^ Letter to Martha Chigot dated 19/3/1917 (family archive) curated by The Association des Amis d' Eugène Chigot, Le Touquet
  21. ^ 'Paysage, château sous le givre' (1905), oil. 54,0 cmx 73,0cm (right inset)
  22. ^ "L'école de Berck - Musée de Berck-sur-Mer". musee.berck.fr. Retrieved 26 July 2020.
  23. ^ "Musée du Touquet-Paris-Plage". Site de letouquet-musee ! (in French). Retrieved 26 July 2020.
  24. ^ Chigot, Eugène. "Tendresse nocturne (Peaceful evening)". Palais des Beaux Arts, Lille. Retrieved 30 August 2022.
  25. ^ "La foule attendant le passage du corps du général Galliéni (recto) / Une maison (verso) | Paris Musées". www.parismuseescollections.paris.fr. Retrieved 26 July 2020.
  26. ^ "La Bourse | Paris Musées". www.parismuseescollections.paris.fr. Retrieved 26 July 2020.
  27. ^ Chigot, Eugène. "Perdus au large (Perdus en mer)". Musée de Nantes. Retrieved 30 August 2022.
  28. ^ "Le Mazet at Juan-Les-Pins". Indianapolis Museum of Art Online Collection. Retrieved 26 July 2020.
  29. ISBN 9782917698020

External links
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