The deaths of Henri Regnault
By: Marc Gotlieb
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2016
Language: eng
Number of pages: 298
ISBN-13: 9780226276045
Subjects: Painters; Biography
Description: This is the first book in English on Henri Regnault (1843 71), a forgotten star of the European fin-de-siecle. A brilliant maverick who once seemed to hold the future of French painting in his hands, Regnault enjoyed a meteoric rise that was cut short when he died at the age of twenty-seven in the Franco-Prussian War. The story of his glamorous career and patriotic death colored French commemorative culture for nearly forty years until his memory was swept away by the vast losses of World War I. In <i>The Deaths of Henri Regnault</i>, Marc Gotlieb reintroduces this important artist while offering a new perspective on the ultimate decline of nineteenth-century salon painting. Gotlieb traces Regnault s trajectory after he won the prestigious Grand Prix de Rome, a fellowship that provided four years of study in Italy. Arriving in Rome, however, Regnaultsuffered a profound crisisof originality that led him to flee the city in favor of Spain and Morocco. Butthecrisis also proved productive: from Rome, Madrid, Tangier, and Paris, Regnault enthralled audiences with a bold suite of strange, seductive, andviolent Orientalist paintings inspired by hisexotic journey images that, Gotlieb argues, arose precisely from the crisis that had overtaken Regnault andthat in key respects was shared by his more avant-garde counterparts. Both an in-depth look at Regnault s violent art and a vibrant essay on historical memory, The Deaths of Henri Regnault lays bare a creative legend who helped shape the collective experience of a generation."
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction : January 9, 1871; title: Escape from the Eternal City; title: The Orientalist sublime; title: Art and desire; title: How to paint blood; title: Buzenval; title: Painter to legend; title: Canonicity.