Louis Adolphe Hervier [1818- 1879]
French
The impending storm, 1857
Oil on panel
9 x 14 inches
Signed and dated at lower left : ‘HERVIER —57’.
Louis Adolphe Hervier (1818-1879)
Louis Adolphe Hervier (1818-1879) was a French painter, engraver, draughtsman and lithographer most associated with the Romantic movement in art. Hervier was born in Paris in 1818 by mother Marie-Thérèse Ernouf and father Marie Antoine Hervier.
LA Herview studied art under his father, Marie Antoine Hervier, a well known miniature painter and former student of Jean-Louis David. LA Hervier—sometimes refered to as Adolphe Hervier—received some additional training under Charles Dusaulchoy (1781-1852) and worked in the studios of Leon Cogniet, Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps and probably Eugene Isabey, a friend of his father.
As a child, the artist was drawn to the ports of Normandy including Honfleur, Le Harvre and towns like Rouen, Granville and Picardy which can be seen in his later works. He painted rural scenes and landscapes from Normandy, Bretagne, Beauce, and Southern France.
The artist’s earliest known production date from about 1840. In 1843, Hervier worked as an engraver for the Parisian publisher Alexis Febre, contributing to the Sketches of travel collection. The sketches of travel, a series of steel drypoints which played a seminal role in establishing the visual language of Romanticism in art.
He worked in oil and watercolor, engravings using etching and aquatint, and lithographs in pencil.
LA Hervier exhibited at the Paris Salon for the first time in 1849, being refused twelve times from 1837-1848. The artist participated in the Paris Salons of 1850, 1852, 1855, 1864 to 1870.
In 1852, Hervier published through Lebrasseur in Paris an album of lithographs of landscapes, seascapes and barracks.
Though his work was praised by fellow artist of his day— Champfleury, Corot, Gautier and Bresdin— Hervier gained little financial success while alive. In death, the artist would become more famous postumously when several portfolios of his work were published in 1888 by Joly and in 1896 by Raymond Bouer in the Gazette des beauxarts and the magazine L’Image by Roger Marx.
The artist died unmarried and broke in a small flat on 3 Rue des Martyrs, Paris on January 18, 1879.
EXHIBITIONS
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1931 Cincinnati Museum of Art, Cincinnati, OH, “The Romantic School”, May 16 -?.
1870 Paris Salon, Paris, France
1864 Paris Salon, Paris, France
1855 Paris Salon, Paris, France
1852 Paris Salon, Paris, France
1850 Paris Salon, Paris, France
1849 Paris Salon, Paris, France
SOURCES
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– Hervier, Louis Adolphe.” Porkopolis.org. Updated April, 2007. Accessed August 5, 2017. http://www.porkopolis.org/pig_artist/louis-adolphe-hervier
– Annie Bauduin (1980), Adolphe Hervier: an independent artist between romance and Impressionism , page 1 et seq.
– Théophile Gautier , Universal Monitor , February 11, 1856.
– Quoted by Henri Beraldi , “Hervier” in The Engravers of the XIX th century: guide of the amateur of modern prints , vol. VIII, Paris, Conquet, 1885-1892, note p. 111 .
– Philippe Burty, catalog preface to a sale by Hervier in 1876, quoted by Henri Beraldi, supra .
– Society of Aquafortists. Modern fortresses: publication of original and unpublished works, Paris, Cadart & Luquet.
– Album Hervier following 43 boards drawn and engraved, Paris, L. Joly bookseller, 1888.
– “Cartons of artists. Masters and small masters of the XIX th century: Adolphe Hervier “, in L’Image , December 1896, p. 18-23.
– Georges Lanoë, History of the French school of landscape: from Chintreuil until 1900 , Nantes , Société Nantaise d’éditions,1905, p. 69-75
Document used to write the articleAnnie Bauduin, Adolphe Hervier, an independent artist between Romanticism and Impressionism , Villeneuve d’Ascq, University of Lille III, 1980, – fr. Revue du Nord , (1980-04 / 06), vol. LXII, n o 245, p. 449-458.
– Michel Laclotte (s./dir.), Dictionary of painting , Paris, Larousse, 1987.
– Extract from the record of Adolphe Hervier in the Bénézit dictionary on the Oxford Index website. 2006, ( ISBN 9780199773787)
– James Thompson PW, Grove Art Online ,1998 (ISBN 9781884446054)
781884446054)