Henri Regnault

Henri Regnault
Henri Regnault
Born	Alexandre Georges Henri Regnault; 31 October 1843; Paris, France
Died	19 January 1871 (aged 27); Rueil-Malmaison, France
Education	École des Beaux-Arts; French Academy in Rome;
Notable work	French Orientalism
Parent	Henri Victor Regnault (father);
Awards	Prix de Rome (1866)
Military career
Allegiance	France
Branch	French Army
Service years	1870–1871
Battles/wars	Franco-Prussian War; Siege of Paris; 2nd Battle of Buzenval †;

Alexandre Georges Henri Regnault (31 October 1843 – 19 January 1871) was a French painter.

Biography

Regnault was born in

Paris Salon. In 1866, however, he carried off the Prix de Rome with a work of unusual force and distinction Thetis bringing the Arms forged by Vulcan to Achilles (École de Beaux-Arts).^[1]

The past in Italy did not touch him, but his illustrations to Wey's Rome[2] show how observant he was of actual life and manners; even his Automedon (School of Fine Arts), executed in obedience to Academical regulations, was but a lively recollection of a carnival horse-race. At Rome, moreover, Regnault came into contact with the modern Hispano-Italian school, a school highly materialistic and inclined to regard even the human subject only as one amongst many sources of visual amusement. The vital, if narrow, energy of this school told on Regnault with ever-increasing force during the few remaining years of his life.^[1]

In 1868 he had sent to the Salon a life-size portrait of a lady in which he had made one of the first attempts to render the actual character of fashionable modern life. While making a tour in Spain, he saw General Juan Prim pass at the head of his troops, and received that lively image of a military demagogue which he afterwards put on canvas, somewhat to the displeasure of his subject. But this work made an appeal to the imagination of the public, while all the later productions of Regnault were addressed exclusively to the eye.^[1]

After a further trip to North Africa, abridged by the necessities of his position as a pensioner of the school of Rome, he painted Judith, then, in 1870, Salomé, and, as a work due from the Roman school, dispatched from Tangier the large canvas, Execution Without Hearing Under the Moorish Kings. The Franco-Prussian War arose, and found Regnault at the Battle of Buzenval, where he was killed on 19 January 1871.^[1]^[3]

His friend, the composer

Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier painted him in the centre of his Le siège de Paris as the soldier collapsed against the personification of Paris.^{[citation needed}

]

Gallery

Thetis bringing the Arms forged by Vulcan to Achilles (1866), Beaux-Arts de Paris
Automedon with the Horses of Achilles (1868), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Salomé (1870), Metropolitan Museum of Art
Summary Execution under the Moorish Kings of Granada (1870), Musée d'Orsay

References

Footnotes

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Chisholm 1911.
^ Wey, Francis (1872). Rome. London: Chapman and Hall.
^ Collister, Peter (1992). "A 'Legendary Hue': Henri Regnault and the Fiction of Henry James and Mrs Humphry Ward," The Modern Language Review, Vol. 87, No. 4, p. 827.

Bibliography

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Regnault, Henri". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 23 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 46.
Gotlieb, M. (2016). The Deaths of Henri Regnault. University of Chicago Press.

External links

[FOOTNOTEChisholm1911-1] Chisholm 1911.

[2] Wey, Francis (1872). Rome. London: Chapman and Hall.

[3] Collister, Peter (1992). "A 'Legendary Hue': Henri Regnault and the Fiction of Henry James and Mrs Humphry Ward," The Modern Language Review, Vol. 87, No. 4, p. 827.

[1]

[3]

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