Antoine Vollon
| Antoine Vollon | |
|---|---|
Portrait of Vollon in 1858 by Pierre Petit
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| Born |
April 23, 1833 Lyon, France |
| Died | August 27, 1900 (aged 67) Paris, France |
| Nationality | French |
| Known for | Painting |
Antoine Vollon (April 23, 1833 – August 27, 1900) was a French realist artist, best known as a painter of still lifes, landscapes and figures. During his lifetime, Vollon was a successful celebrity, enjoyed an excellent reputation, and was called a "painter's painter". In 2004, New York's then-PaceWildenstein gallery suggested that his "place in the history of French painting has still not been properly assessed".
Vollon was born the son of an ornamental craftsman in Lyon, France. He taught himself to paint. He began an apprenticeship to an engraver, and studied under Jehan Georges Vibert at the École des Beaux-Arts in Lyon to become a printmaker. He then worked at decorating enamelled pans and stoves. In 1860 he and Marie-Fanny Boucher married and later had two children, Alexis and Marguerite.
In 1859 he moved to Paris, with the intention of becoming a painter. There he became a student of Théodule Ribot and was influenced by Dutch still life painters of the 17th century. He became friends with Alexandre Dumas, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Honoré Daumier and Charles-François Daubigny. Vollon once described himself as a young artist "madly in love with painting".
Vollon aspired to paint figures and not only still lifes which were the lowest acceptable genre for the Salon. He submitted a figure painting of a woman carrying a large basket on her back, Femme du Pollet à Dieppe (Seine-Inferieure), to the 1876 Salon, where it won first prize and received universally great reviews. However it was criticised by Édouard Manet, who unleashed a few words, in English: Bah! What is Vollon's Femme? A basket that walks (French: Bah! . . . qu'est-ce que la Femme de Vollon? un panier qui marche) which stigmatized it. According to Carol Forman Tabler, curator and professor of art who wrote her dissertation on Vollon, writing for Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide:
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