#19th-century French painters

[kecobe]

Bonjour, Monsieur Gauguin Paul Gauguin 1889 Oil on canvas National Gallery in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic

[solcattus]

Perfect Harmony, 1894

By Louis Welden Hawkins

[sardosycserokyric]

Penelope, Charles-François Marchal, c. 1868.

[edwardian-girl-next-door]

~ Édouard Debat-Ponsan Portrait de mademoiselle Élisabeth de Vilmorin (1891) (detail)

via edarlein11 on pinterest

[mythical-redon]

By Odilon Redon (French, 1840-1916)

"Pegasus"

Love the airy colours in this! It's like an ancient tale fully coming to life. Probably my favorite depiction of this subject by Redon.

[constanzarte]

Bouguereau, Combat des centaures et des lapithes

[artemlegere]

Sappho Playing the Lyre

Artist: Léopold Burthe (French, 1823–1860)

Date: 1849

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Musée des Beaux-Arts de Carcassonne, Carcassonne, France

Sappho

Called the Tenth Muse by Plato, Sappho was a prolific poet of ancient Greece. She innovated the form of poetry through her first-person narration (instead of writing from the vantage point of the gods) and by refining the lyric meter. The details of Sappho’s life have been obscured by legend and mythology, and the best source of information is the Suidas, a Greek lexicon compiled in the 10th century.

Sappho was born on Lesbos to a noble family. She lived most of her life in the city of Mytilene, with the exception of her family’s brief exile in Sicily shortly after 600 B.C.E. She married a wealthy man in Mytilene, and they had a daughter names Cleis. Sappho also headed a thiasos, or an academy of unmarried women. As was the custom at the time, wealthy families sent their daughters to live at these schools where they were taught proper social graces, composition, singing, and poetry recitation. Much of Sappho’s poetry was composed in this community, and she used many of her students as subjects.

Perhaps Sappho’s most famous work is her “Ode to Aphrodite”:

Deathless Aphrodite of the spangled mind, child of Zeus, who twists lures, I beg you do not break with hard pains, O lady, my heart

but come here if ever before you caught my voice far off and listening left your father’s golden house and came,

yoking your car. And fine birds brought you, quick sparrows over the black earth whipping their wings down the sky through midair -

they arrive. But you, O blessed one, smiled in your deathless face and asked what (now again) I have suffered and why (now again) I am calling out

and what I want to happen most of all in my crazy heart. Whom should I persuade (now again) to lead you back into her love? Who, O Sappho, is wronging you?

For if she flees, soon she will pursue. If she refuses gifts, rather will she give them. If she does not love, soon she will love even unwilling.

Come to me now: loose me from hard care and all my heart longs to accomplish, accomplish. You be my ally.

(Carson, If Not, Winter, 2–5)

[escapismsworld]

Interior with Young Woman Tracing a Flower

1820-22

Louise-Adéone Drölling (French, 1797-1834).

[bodies-made-of-art]

The Youth of Bacchus by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1884)

[periodinteriors]

Auguste Garneray (French, 1785-1824), An Elegant Family in a Neo-Gothic Interior, 1820, watercolor.

[empirearchives]

Young female artist during the Napoleonic era, aided by her mother

C. 1802-1812, Mademoiselle Pastel, suivie de sa mère, Le Bon Genre N. 17, published by Pierre La Mésangère

[kecobe]

The Mystery of the Night Alphonse Osbert (French; 1857–1939) 1897 Collection Lucile Audouy, © Thomas Hennocque

On view: Into the Dreams: Symbolism, Ordrupgaard, Charlottenlund, Denmark (February 5–June 15, 2025)

[solcattus]

Modestie, 1898

By Charles-Lucien Léandre

[edwardian-girl-next-door]

~ Léon-François Comerre, Portrait of Suzanne Hudelo (detail)

[mythical-redon]

By Odilon Redon (French, 1840-1916)

"Apparition"

[sardosycserokyric]

Woman in a Riding Habit (L'Amazone), Gustave Courbet, c. 1855-59