Les paysagistes en Auvergne, 1800-1825

Résumé En

Landscape-painters in the Auvergne, 1800-1825 During the 18th c., the Auvergne was an artistic desert, arousing little interest prior to the publication of some picturesque travellers’ accounts and to P.-M. Gault de Saint-Germain’s stay at Clermont between 1793 and 1801. From time to time, portrait painters such as J.-B. Isabey or other painters of historical subjects depicted the Puy-de-Dôme landscapes, but the Auvergne did not begin to attract artists on a regular basis until the influence of the books of B. Depping and H. Langlois, along with the triumph of lithography, had made itself felt. The year 1819 was a turning point and the beginning of an artistic fashion for the illustration of Auvergnat sites, particularly the Mont-Dore and Royat with their eminently romantic appeal. They were appreciated both by English water-colour artists and by French painters who exhibited at the Salons or who published albums of reproductions. During the 1830s the Auvergne acquired a reputation as the landscape artist’s favourite country. Gradually the landscape, at first a topographical record or the setting for some troubadour scene, became a valued genre in its own right.