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Alexandre Marie Colin (French, 1798-1875)
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Alexandre Marie Colin
L\'Orientale
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Biography |
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Five year’s the junior of Eugène Delacroix, Colin entered the École des Beaux Arts in 1814, first as a pupil of Girodet, but then joining Guérin’s studio in 1816, in which the young Eugène Delacrois had also enrolled. He and Delacroix both attracted the attention of their teachers, winning drawing and composition prizes and were in the vanguard of the new wave of artists who decisively rejected the rigid conventions established by David. |
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Throughout the 1820s they remained close friends, sharing a studio and even lithographing each other’s works. In 1825 Colin and Bonnington went on an extended trip together, Bonnington taking up Colin’s love of modern historical and literary subjects while Colin embraced Bonnington’s fluid landscape technique. A frequent exhibitor at the Salon from 1819 until 1868, Colin concentrated primarily on subjects from historical or literary sources, while painting a few landscapes and enjoying a reputation as an accomplished portraitist. |
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Over the course of his long career he gradually modified his style, making it more acceptable to Salon juries which had rejected several of his early works from the 1820s for the very painterly qualities that we admire today. An outstanding example of such works is the Giaour and Hassan, from Byron’s poem, first exhibited at the 1826 Exposition pour les grecs (along with Delacroix’s and Horace Vernet’s paintings of the same title) but then rejected (with Delacroix’s painting) by the 1827 jury. The recent inclusion of this latter work in the monumental Constable to Delacroix exhibition at the Tate, London, has exposed him to a much wider audience. |
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