All oil paintings of Alexandre Cabanel (19 Century, French,
Academism) will be hand painted by our professional artists. Let HandmadePiece help you bring better museum quality art reproductions of Alexandre Cabanel to home. Photo preview of the finished art will be offered before delivery, global free shipping.
1823 - 1889 • French • Painter • Academic
"M. Cabanel is not an artist; he is a saint. He doesn't make art; he makes perfection. He does not deserve criticism; he deserves paradise." - Camille Lemonnier, 1870
Once reputed to have more students than any other living French master, and more winners of the PRIX DE ROME, Cabanel himself received most of the honors that the French government bestowed on artists. His international reputation was well deserved, judging by the tone of Lemonnier's praise, quoted above, from a SALON review. As did GEROME, Cabanel taught at the ECOLE DES BEAUX-ARTS and there was something of a rivalry between them. At the Salon of 1886, at least 112 exhibitors were Cabanel's students. His popularity dwindled, however, and Gerome took the lead, especially among Americans. Both were ACADEMIC painters who favored exotic Middle Eastern subjects. Cabanel's best known of that type is Cleopatra Testing Poisons on Condemned Prisoners (1887), an erotic representation of the popular Oriental FEMME FATALE. Perhaps more alluring, and certainly less threatening, is his earlier and most famous work, The Birth of Venus (1862). This voluptuous nude, floating on ocean swells with cupids flying about her, is sleeping, and thus vulnerable rather than dangerous. She is the opposite of MANET's bold and confrontational nude Olympia, which was painted the following year.
