Etienne-prosper Berne-bellecour - Portrait Of Major Doctor Daymard

Etienne-Prosper BERNE-BELLECOUR Boulogne-sur-mer, 1838 - Paris, 1910 Oil on canvas 46 x 33 cm (55 x 43 cm with the frame) Signed lower right "To his friend doctor Daymard / E. Berne-Bellecour / 1903" Painting exhibited at Salon des Artistes Français of 1904 (number 136. “Portrait of Mr. Major Daymard”)
Academic painter, Berne-Bellecour worked for illustrated newspapers after failing at the Prix de Rome in 1859. In 1870, he enlisted in the Frankish Corps of Tirailleurs de la Seine and is decorated with the Military Medal. This will decide his career. Companion of Édouard Detaille and Alphonse de Neuville, he painted battle pictures and portraits of soldiers who made his success. The Tirailleurs de la Seine au combat by Malmaison (1874), The Prisoner and the Defense of a Bridge are among his most famous paintings. Our painting was exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1904 under the title "Portrait of Mr. Major Daymard". Léon Daymard, originally from Cahors, like his brother who was president of Crédit Foncier, was a famous military doctor. Active from the war of 1870 until 1904, he participated in seven military campaigns and he followed the French armies to the colonies. The quality of finish of Berne-Bellecourt's painting is all the more remarkable in his military portraits as here. It also represented as a backdrop a beautiful landscape undoubtedly in the North African colonies. Because in 1903 the French army was active in North Africa from Egypt to Morocco to defend its colonies against England and Germany.