Henry-Pierre Picou [1824-1895]
French
À l’opéra [To the opera], 1873
Oil on canvas
24 x 20 inches
Signed at lower right : ‘HENRY / PICOU / 73’.

Original period frame.

Henry-Pierre Picou (1824-1895)

BIOGRAPHY

Henry-Pierre Picou (1824-1895) was a French Neoclassical painter known for his mythological, history, and Orientalist paintings. He was born in Nantes, Upper Brittany, France on February 27, 1824.

Picou studied at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, under Swiss academic painter Charles (Marc-Charles) Gleyre (1806-1874). Gleyre was a popular teacher and his students became giants in the art world, including Claude Monet, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley and James Abbott McNeill Whistler. The Swiss master’s precise draughtsmanship and perspective drawing was instilled within his students, including the work of Picou. It was at the Ecole that Picou met like-minded fellow artists Jean-Léon Gérome (1824-1904), Jean-Louis Hamon (1821-1874) and Gustave Boulanger (1824-1888), all of whom with Picou championed the French Neoclassic movement. Neoclassic art looked to the grandeur and formality of Greek and Roman antiquity, their myths and history as a reaction to the overly stylized Rococo movement. Picou and his fellow artists sought a rational, methodical and logical approach to art, rejecting artistic whim. Of the artist’s circle, Picou’s work shows the closest stylistic ties to his teacher Gleyer. Gleyer traveled for more than six years in the Far East which would also influenced Picou.

During his career, Picou began with portraits, proceeded to classical historical subject matter and finished with allegorical and mythological themes. He received large religious fresco commission including the Église Saint-Roch church in Paris.

Picou exhibited at the Paris Salon beginning in 1847. In 1848, he won a second-place medal for his Cléopâtre et Antoine sur le Cydnus [Cleopatra on the Cydnus]. French art critic Théophile Gautier commented that the work was “…too ambitious”, but also said that, “as it is, it gives the best hope for the future of the young artist, and ranks among the seven or eight most important paintings of the Salon.” It was such an important painting, considered one of Picou’s masterpieces, that it traveled to American in 1875, eventually ending up in San Francisco, CA. After his great Salon success, Picou opened a large studio on the Boulevard de Magenta, Paris. It allowed him to freely work on large painting and fresco commissions. In 1853, his popularity and fame grew, winning the second ever Rome Prize. Picou won a second-place medal in the 1857 Paris Salon. He continued to show almost ever year at the Salon until 1893, two years before his death.

Picou died on July 17, 1895.

SOURCES

– Bryan, Michael (1904). Bryan’s Dictionary of Painters and Engravers. IV. London: The Macmillan Company. p. 115. Retrieved 26 June 2010.
– Vapereau, Gustave (1893). Dictionnaire universel des contemporains: contenant toutes les personnes notables de la France et des pays étrangers (in French) (Sixième ed.). Paris: Librairie Hachette. pp. 1249–1250.
– “ART / 4 / 2DAY”. Retrieved 26 June 2010.
– Gautier, Théophile (April 1848). Salon de 1848 (in French). La Presse. Tel qu’il est, il donne les meilleures espérances pour l’avenir du jeune artiste, et se classe parmi les sept ou huit toiles les plus importantes du Salon.
– Shepp, Daniel B. (1905). Shepp’s library of history and art: a pictorial history of all lands and times; the great incidents of history set forth by the magic pencils of the world’s greatest artists. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Globe Bible Publishing Company. p. 118.
– Bellier de la Chavignerie, Emile; Auvray, Louis (1885). Dictionnaire général des artistes de l’école française depuis l’origine des arts du dessin jusqu’à nos jours: architectes, peintres, sculpteurs, graveurs et lithographes (in French). Paris: Librairie Renouard. p. 267.