Paul BAUDRY (1828-1886) ✿

Paul-Jacques-Aime BAUDRY (1828-1886) was a French painter born at La Roche-sur-Yonne (Vendée).
He studied under Drolling, a sound but second-rate artist, and carried off the Prix de Rome in 1850 by his picture of Zenobia found on the banks of the Araxes.

Diana Reposing, c.1859

La vague et la Perle, 1862

The Red Rose

In the course of his residence in Italy Baudry derived strong inspiration from Italian art with the mannerism of Correggio, as was very evident in the two works he exhibited in the Salon of 1857, which were purchased for the Luxembourg: The Martyrdom of a Vestal Virgin and The Child. His Leda, St John the Baptist, and a Portrait of Beul, exhibited at the same time, took a first prize that year.Throughout this early period Baudry commonly selected mythological or fanciful subjects, one of the most noteworthy being The Pearl and the Wave. Once only did he attempt an historical picture, Charlotte Corday after the murder of Marat (1861); and returned by preference to the former class of subjects or to painting portraits of illustrious men of his day: Guizot, Charles Garnier, Edmond About.
The works that crowned Baudry's reputation were his mural decorations, which show much imagination and a high artistic gift for color, as may be seen in the frescoes in the Paris Cour de Cassation, at the château of Chantilly, and some private residences, the hotel Fould and hôtel Paivabut, above all, in the decorations of the foyer of the Paris opera house. These, more than thirty paintings in all, and among them compositions figurative of dancing and music, occupied the painter for ten years.
Baudry died in Paris in 1886. He was a member of the Institut de France, succeeding Jean Victor Schnetz. Two of his colleagues, Dubois and Marius-Jean Mercié, co-operating with his brother, Baudry the architect, erected a monument to him in Paris (1890). The statue of Baudry at La Roche-sur-Yonne (1897) is by Gérôme.