page_title: Georges Paul François Laurent Laugée
section_title: International acclaim
hierarchical_section_title: Georges Paul François Laurent Laugée / International acclaim
caption_attribution_description: English: Painting by Georges Paul François Laurent Laugée (1853-1937) of a shepherdess in a dark red dress with a black cape, knitting in a field of wildflowers, with animals in the background. Size 124 x 92 cm. Private collection.
context_page_description: Georges Paul François Laurent Laugée was a Naturalist French Painter of the 19th and early 20th century.
context_section_description: During the 1890s Laugée's success continued.  One of his 1891 Salon entries, Au printemps de la vie (In the Springtime of Life), which won a medal, was chosen for exhibition at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, forming part of the French art shown there (see image right side).  The painting clearly shows the melding of Impressionism with the intensity of the Pre-Raphaelites, not unlike what was done by other painters around the same time, such as John William Waterhouse (1849-1917) and Arthur Hughes (1832-1915, see his April Love).  William Walton's guide to the art and architecture in the Exposition discusses Laugée's painting and observes its naturalist authenticity: "More of these humble folk, artfully arranged but with very little artificial glossing over of their awkward rusticity, may be seen in George (sic) Laugée's "In the Spring-time of Life", a very upright and much embarrassed pair facing each other in a pleasantly illuminated bit of greenery. Bastien-Lepage was one of the first to render this subtle charm of the tender passion burning sweetly through an uncouth exterior, like the flame of a horn lantern, as it were."  In 1900, at the Éxposition Universelle in Paris, this painting received another medal, this time a silver medal.
  Images of Laugée's works began to appear in various publications, including Famous Paintings of the World (1894), which was an early type of introductory art history text.  The authors selected Laugée's painting Bergere et Mouton (Shepherdess and Lamb, see illustration in gallery below), a "charming picture" of a shepherdess feeding her favorite lamb. "It is a simple story the artist has chosen to tell; but he has set it in a scene of tender and idyllic beauty, thoroughly appropriate to the gentle theme of affection he has selected for the central thought."  The theme of the shepherdess is one to which Laugée returned many times.  Typical is the Bergère au tricot (Shepherdess Knitting), shown to the right, which like Au printemps de la vie shows Pre-Raphaelite as well as Impressionist influences.  Other paintings on the shepherdess theme can be seen in the Gallery below.
  Laugée's exhibitions as well as his exposure in books caused him to achieve a following with art collectors, particularly in America.  American fascination with French art was growing (as was American wealth), boosted by the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in addition to the opening of galleries by European art dealers in major U.S. cities such as New York, Chicago, and San Francisco.  A 1906 auction catalog published by the American Art Association features an illustration of Laugée's painting Coming Through the Rye (À travers le seigle).
  In 1907 Laugée was elected to be a Member of the Committee of the Société des Artistes Français, established in 1881 with the primary task of organizing the Salon des artistes français, replacing the older Salon which the French government no longer handled it.  In 1908 Laugée became a member of the Salon jury.  It appears that at that point he no longer submitted paintings to it for exhibition; his last paintings to the Salon seem to have been in 1907: Aux approaches du crepuscule (The Coming of Twilight] and Le repas aux champs; soleil couchant (Meal in the Fields at Sunset].  There was no doubt much sorrow in his family with the passing of his mother in 1909, and that of his brother-in-law and close friend Julien Dupré in 1910.  Likewise the years of World War I must have been difficult for the family in Saint Quentin, which was occupied by German forces in 1914, with the population forced to evacuate in 1916, followed by looting and damage or destruction to 80% of the buildings.
caption: Laugee Bergère au tricot (Shepherdess Knitting), private collection
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "1084", "Image ImageLength": "1483", "Image BitsPerSample": "482", "Image Compression": "Uncompressed", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image PlanarConfiguration": "1", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image DateTime": "2017:02:07 12:56:00", "Image Make": "Hasselblad", "Image Model": "Hasselblad H3D II-39", "Image Software": "PaintShop Pro 18.00", "Image InterColorProfile": "[]", "Image IPTC/NAA": "[28, 2, 55, 0, 8, 50, 48, 49, 52, 48, 50, 49, 50]", "Image ExifOffset": "230", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "3849", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "8122", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0210", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1084", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1483", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2014:02:12 09:22:04", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2014:02:12 09:22:04", "EXIF ExposureTime": "383479/134217728", "EXIF FNumber": "8", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Manual", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "100", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "567151177/67108864", "EXIF ApertureValue": "6", "EXIF MeteringMode": "CenterWeightedAverage", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "85"}