#french painter

[mythologypaintings]

Statue of Polyhymnia in a Landscape

Artist: Charles Meynier (French, 1768–1832)

Date: 1794-1795

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Museum of the French Revolution, Vizille, France

Description

Polyhymnia  ('the one of many hymns') is, in Greek mythology, the Muse of sacred poetry, sacred hymn, dance and eloquence, as well as agriculture and pantomime.

Polyhymnia name comes from the Greek words "poly", meaning "many", and "hymnos", which means "praise".

[royalty-nobility]

Portrait of Empress Elisabeth Alexeievna of Russia

Artist: Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (French, 1755–1842)

Date: 1795

Medium: Oil on canvas

Location: Castle of Wolfsgarten, Hessen, Germany

Elizabeth Alexeievna (Louise of Baden)

Elizabeth Alexeievna (24 January 1779 – 16 May 1826), born Princess Louise of Baden (German: Luise Marie Auguste von Baden), was Empress of Russia during her marriage to Emperor Alexander I.

[galleryofart]

Bretons in the Forest of Huelgoat

Artist: Paul Sérusier (French, 1864–1927)

Date: 1893

Medium: Oil paint on canvas

Collection: Newfields Art Museum, Indianapolis, Indiana, United States

[the-cricket-chirps]

Eugene Seguy, Winged Patterns I

[nothing-like-the-sun-jgr]

"La mare,effet de neige" (The pond,snow effect)

1874-75, oil on canvas,60.6x81.7 cm

Claude Monet (French,1840-1926)

[unapologeticallygay]

Two Young Women Kissing, ca. 1790 -1794, oil on canvas, Louis-Léopold Boilly (1761-1845)

[mote-historie]

William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Child Braiding A Crown, detail, 1874.

[solcattus]

Modestie, 1898

By Charles-Lucien Léandre

[edwardian-girl-next-door]

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

via edarlein11 on pinterest

[artthatgivesmefeelings]

William Adolphe Bouguereau (French, 1825-1905) L'Amour et Psyché, 1899

[sardosycserokyric]

Penelope, Charles-François Marchal, c. 1868.

[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)

[theaskew]

Marc Chagall (Russian-French 1887-1985), Les Amoureux (Lovers), 1928. Oil on canvas, 45 x 35 in.

[lepetitdragonvert]

Leilah

Artist : Gaston Bussière (1862-1929)

[bodies-made-of-art]

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