page_title: John Russell (Australian painter)
section_title: Belle Île
hierarchical_section_title: John Russell (Australian painter) / Life / Belle Île
context_page_description: John Peter Russell was an Australian impressionist painter.
  Born and raised in Sydney, Russell moved to Europe in his late teenage years to attend art school. There, he befriended fellow pupil Vincent Van Gogh and, in 1886, painted the first oil portrait of the artist, now held at the Van Gogh Museum. That same year, Russell painted with Claude Monet at Belle Île. Russell moved there soon after with his wife, Marianna Russell, one of sculptor Auguste Rodin's favourite models. Henri Matisse visited Russell at Belle Île in the 1890s, and later credited the Australian with introducing him to impressionist techniques and colour theory.
  Despite painting prolifically and maintaining close ties with the European avant-garde, Russell rarely exhibited his works and, having received a large inheritance from his father, showed no interest in making money from art. After his wife died in 1907, Russell, grief-stricken, destroyed hundreds of his paintings. He returned to Sydney in old age where he died in relative obscurity.
context_section_description: Russell married the renowned beauty Marianna Antonietta Mattiocco, an Italian seamstress and model of Auguste Rodin's. They settled at Belle Île off the coast of Brittany, where he designed his own home and established an artists' colony. Russell was the first non-native to move to the island, leading locals to call his home overlooking Port Goulphar "Le Chateau de l'Anglais". He would have 11 children with Mattiocco, of whom six, five sons and a daughter, survived.
  Claude Monet often worked with Russell at Belle Île and influenced his style, though it has been said that Monet preferred some of Russell's Belle Île seascapes to his own. In 1890, Russell left Belle Île and traveled to Antibes in a horse-drawn cart, where he rented a house for the winter and produced some of his most acclaimed work. Due to his substantial private income Russell did not attempt to make his pictures well known. In the 1880s and 1890s, Russell hewed closely to pure French impressionist style.
  In 1907, Marianna Russell died in Paris of cancer. Grief-stricken, Russell took her body to Belle Île in a rowboat and buried her next to his home. He then destroyed an estimated 400 of his oils and watercolours. Auguste Rodin despaired at the destruction of "those marvels", and in one of his final letters to Russell, said, "Your works will live, I am certain. One day you will be placed on the same level with our friends Monet, Renoir, and Van Gogh."
caption: Roc Toul (Roche Guibel), 1904
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