Auguste Rigon (1850-1884) ''landscape Of Italy''

Oil on canvas signed lower right

Auguste Maillet, known as Rigon, born in 1855 in Mormant and died in 1884 in Reims, is a French painter, decorator of the Reims theater. He was a student of Louis-Henri de Rudder, history painter, genre painter and portraitist. He probably made a trip to Italie around 1877

In this landscape, we find the thick and greasy material characteristic of Rigon's work. However, here, the artist seems more precise in his representation of the trees. The branches are like nets stretched in the sky. Some of them, so fine, resemble the drawing of a Chinese calligraphy. Temperament and preciousness combine. The character gets lost in the limits of the ground and the water, and even the bursts of light are scattered throughout the painting. We are far from the appreciations of the local critics who proudly say about their painter who became a resident of Reims: "M. Maillet paints landscapes whose vaporous mists seem lit by the suns of Corot." (Le Guesnier, 1872).