01 Work of Art, Marine Paintings - With Footnotes, #233

Louis Gabriel Eugène Isabey, (French, 1803-1886)

Bateaux dans la tempete/ Boats in the storm, c. 186

Oil on canvas

26 3/8 x 43 3/4in (67 x 111cm)

Private collection

Eugène Louis Gabriel Isabey (22 July 1803, in Paris – 25 April 1886, in Montévrain) was a French painter, lithographer and watercolorist in the Romantic style.

He was born to Jean-Baptiste Isabey, a well known painter who enjoyed the patronage of the Imperial Family. Originally, he wanted to be a sailor, but his father insisted that he study painting; a turnabout from the usual situation where the family opposes an artistic career in favor of something more practical.

After studying with his father and copying the Old Masters at the Louvre, he began sharing a studio with the landscape painter, Xavier Leprince at Honfleur, in 1824, then moved to Saint-Siméon after Leprince's untimely death. The following year, he sent some landscapes to the Salon for his first formal exhibition.

In 1831he made a short trip to Algiers, where he had painted scenes of the Royal Navy's campaign, and was concerned that the situation there was still too unsettled to make a lengthy stay. 

Shortly after, Isabey became a court painter for King Louis-Philippe and was named a Knight in the Légion d'Honneur in 1832. One of his best known paintings was done during this period, in 1840, depicting the return of Napoleon's remains from Saint Helena aboard the Belle Poule.

He favored historical paintings, genre scenes and landscapes, but also executed numerous canvases depicting storms and shipwrecks; possibly reflecting his own thwarted career plans. During a trip to England, he was known to have studied the works of J.M.W. Turner. He was especially skillful at rendering subtleties in darker colors; which might be called a form of grisaille. He took in students on a regular basis; including Eugène Boudin, Johan Barthold Jongkind and Durand-Brager. In his later years, he turned from marine painting to historical scenes, usually of a violent nature, such as massacres, duels and robberies. More on Louis Gabriel Eugène Isabey

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