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| Antoine Vollon (Lyon 1833 - Paris 1900)
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| Still life with a map of the world, books and parchments
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Signed lower right: A. Vollon
Oil on canvas
18 ¿ x 21 ¿ in. (46 x 55 cm.)
“M. Vollon was above all a popular painter. The public gathered in throngs before his paintings at the Salon, and the artist had managed to make a success of a work solely through the vigour and depth of its execution.”
Such was the eulogy the art critic Arsène Alexandre gave to mark the death of Antoine Vollon, whose career as a painter had spanned over forty years and ended with him being heralded as one of the most successful painters of his generation who combined the two traditions of Romanticism and Realism.
Vollon’s career began in Lyon, where, after his father’s death in 1847, he worked as an apprentice to an engraver. The skills he learnt during this time were clearly exercised whilst studying at the city’s Ecole des Beaux-Arts between 1850 and 1852, where he received awards for printmaking. His extensive knowledge of the old masters was displayed when he began to exhibit his oil paintings in 1858 in Lyons, for they reveal a keen appreciation of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century painters that was to continue throughout his career. In 1859, determined to pursue a career in painting, Vollon moved to the artistic centre of Paris, where he befriended the realist painters François Bonvin and Théodule Ribot. Following rejection by the official Salon in 1863, he exhibited at the Salon des Refusés alongside artists such as James McNeill Whistler, Edouard Manet and Henri Fantin-Latour; however in the following year two of his paintings were accepted by the Salon jury, one of these was the Kitchen Interior, Musée de Nantes, Nantes. It was bought by the State marking the beginning of a rapid rise to success that was greatly aided by other State purchases, particularly in the 1860s. Vollon received a succession of awards: Salon medals in 1865, 1868 and 1869, and a gold medal at the Exposition Universelle in 1878, the same year he was made an officer of the Légion d’honneur.
Throughout his career, Vollon displayed his range and ability by painting a variety of themes, including genre scenes, figures, animals, and landscapes, yet his reputation rested largely on his still lifes. Still life with a map of the world, books and parchments offers a prime example of the virtuosity and proficiency the artist displayed within these works. An intimate picture crowded with books, papers, and scrolls centering around a globe, which highlights his command of light and reflection, this work enables us to understand why Alexandre declared that “as a ‘painter of objects’, M.Vollon had few rivals.”
Vollon has pushed the objects comprising the composition to the forefront of the scene, creating a sense of intimacy with the viewer and investing the objects with a sense of vitality. By focusing this way on simple objects, seemingly casually arranged, Vollon revealed the great influence that Dutch and Spanish painting of the seventeenth century wielded upon him.
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P. and D. Colnaghi and Co., Ltd - 15 Old Bond Street London W1S 4AX, United Kingdom Tel: +44-20-7491 7408 Fax: +44-20-7491 8851 contact@colnaghi.co.uk
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