September 8, 2010

Emile Friant

Cast Shadows
1891
Oil on Canvas
Signed and dated lower left: E. Friant / 91

Emile Friant was only nineteen years old when, in 1882, he first started exhibiting at the official Salon. Less than ten years later, he and other artists from the Naturalist school moved to the dissident Salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. In 1891, he participated in this Salon for the second time, presenting four paintings: three portraits and a genre scene which he placed prominently when submitting his works.

This "modern" scene, entitled Cast Shadows, makes as much reference to Antiquity and to the invention of painting as to the new techniques of artists like Degas, inspired by artificial lighting and the marked interplay of shadow and light.

Op de website van Musee d'Orsay, Parijs

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