Alexandre Cabanel

Alexandre Cabanel - Nudes in mythical garb brought the breakthrough

Alexandre Cabanel was born in Montpellier on 28 September 1823. The youngest child of a carpenter, he took an early interest in the fine arts and attended Charles Matet's drawing class at the École des Beaux-Arts in Montpellier at the age of 11. At the age of 17, Cabanel began his studies at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris under the history and portrait painter François-Édouard Picot, who introduced him to the school of the classicist Jacques-Louis David, whilst Cabanel’s role models also included the Renaissance master Raphael. In 1844, he had the opportunity to exhibit at the Salon de Paris for the first time, and the following year he won the Prix de Rome scholarship at the age of just 22. Cabanel's early works, such as The Death of Moses from 1852, still showed a clear commitment to the constrained academic guidelines, although the artist's great talent as a draughtsman and composer is already recognisable. The work The Widow of the Chapel Master (1859),however, brought an unmistakable development towards a modern understanding of the image. Despite these tentative initial successes, Alexandre Cabanel only celebrated his great breakthrough when he turned to mythological scenes and thus also to the depiction of nudes.

The Birth of Venus - Cabanel's most famous work

Alexandre Cabanel created what is probably his most famous work, The Birth of Venus, as a result of his turn towards the depiction of mythological nudes. The original version was painted in 1863, while the best-known copy was painted by the artist himself in 1875. The epochal work in rosy colours and lush lines was enthusiastically received at the Paris Salon of 1863, which has since been known simply as the Venus Salon; the buyer of the painting was none other than Napoleon III himself, who incorporated it into his private collection. Although the writer Émile Zola was scathingly critical of the depicted Venus, this did not detract from the work's success. Numerous artists followed Cabanel's example, including Gustave Courbet, who became Alexandre Cabanel's successor and counterpart with his realistic nude studies in the late 1860s. The artist also demonstrated a keen sense as a portrait painter of elegant ladies, whom he staged in an interesting way with cool and subdued colours, but showed less skill in portraying men.

One of the most influential artists of his era

Throughout his whole career, Alexandre Cabanel maintained close ties with the Salon de Paris, to whose jury he was regularly elected. Hundreds of young artists crowded around him and followed his lessons. Alexandre Cabanel received prizes and awards for his celebrated work, including the Grande Médaille d'Honneur of the Paris Salon three times (1865, 1867, 1878). He was a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts and taught as a professor at the École des beaux-arts in Paris. His artistic convictions shaped the Belle Époque and its aesthetics; when he vehemently opposed, alongside William Adolphe Bouguereau, giving the Impressionist painter Édouard Manet and his fellow artists a place at the Salon de Paris in 1863, the French Emperor Napoleon III responded by launching the Salon des Refusés to great acclaim, which significantly fueled the artistic avant-garde in France and earned the Salon de Paris a stubborn reputation for being anti-progressive and traditionalist.

Alexandre Cabanel died in Paris on 23 January 1889.