Henri Joseph Harpignies (1819-1916) French: "clairière" School Of Barbizon; Corot; Préimpressionist

Henri Joseph HARPIGNIES (1819-1916) French: "Clairière"; oil on canvas, signed lower left, size: 19 x 24 cm Barbizon school Henri Joseph Harpignies born in Valenciennes (Nord) June 28, 1819 and died in Saint-Privé (Yonne) August 28, 1916 is a landscape painter, French watercolourist and engraver from the Barbizon School. Biography Henri Joseph Harpignies' parents, Henri and Adèle1, intended him for a commercial career, but his determination to become a painter led them to allow him to enter Jean Achard's studio in Paris in 1846. After two years of training, he left to travel to Italy. Returning to France in 1850, Henri Harpignies devoted himself to childish amusements in landscaped surroundings and joined Corot and the Barbizon School, whose influence he came under. Bound by friendship, the two artists traveled together to Italy in 1860. In 1859, he collaborated in the decoration of the staff room of the Charité hospital in Paris [ref. necessary], partially reconstructed at the Museum of Public Assistance - Hospitals of Paris2. On his return from Italy in 1861, he achieved his first success at the Salon with his Lisière de bois sur les bords de l'Allier. He then exhibited regularly at the Salon. In 1866, he received his first medal for Le Soir dans la campagne de Rome3, acquired by the State4. He then lived at 185, rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré in the 8th arrondissement of Paris (where a commemorative plaque pays homage to him) before moving to 9, rue Coëtlogon. During his very long career, Henri Harpignies painted a large number of works in Hérisson in Bourbonnais, as well as in Nivernais and Auvergne. He produced decorative works for the Paris Opera, including the Val d'Égrie panel, which he exhibited at the Salon in 1870. He was a friend of Léon Bonnat who painted his portrait twice in 1889 (Musée des Beaux- Arts of Valenciennes5 and Petit Palais in Paris6). He painted the stained glass windows of the Château de Trousse-Barrière in Briare in 1895. In 1898, he was named Rosati d'honneur7. Anatole France called him “the Michelangelo of trees and peaceful countryside”8. At the end of his life, he was nearly blind. He is buried in the cemetery of Saint-Privé (Yonne)9. Public Collections: Landscape with a City in the Distance (c. 1865), watercolor, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Canada Montreal, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts: Moonlight (1889) Quebec, National Museum of Fine Arts of Quebec: Mountain landscape10. United States Tulsa, Philbrook Museum of Art (en): Railway bridge over the Briare. Washington, National Gallery of Art: Landscape in Auvergne. Argentina Buenos Aires, National Museum of Fine Arts: The Briare Canal. France Lille, Palace of Fine Arts: View taken at Moncel-sur-Seille (Meurthe-et-Moselle), around 1868, oil on canvas, 73 × 100 cm11