Adolphe Félix Cals (1810 - 1880) - A Village Around Paris, Daté 1857.

Oil on paper mounted on cardboard
Signed and dated 57 lower right
Size : 13,5 x 18,5 cm
With frame : 24 x 29 cm
In its period frame gilded with gold leaf.

A landscape of great delicacy certainly painted around Paris.
For his own pleasure, Adolphe Felix Cals painted landscapes on the spot during his walks around Paris or on the Montmartre hill. A spontaneity and a freedom of expression characterise our work.
His brushstrokes are both delicate and lively, his palette of ochre and orange colours against which the green of the trees and the gateway stand out.

Adolphe-Felix Cals is in the tradition of Boudin, Daubigny and Jongkind. He was a precursor of the Impressionists and exhibited with them from their first exhibitions from 1874 to 1879.
He was the essential step in the line of descent from Corot to Impressionism.

"The most sincere and natural of all our artists" Ed About

Biography:

Coming from a modest background, Adolphe-Félix Cals, a humble and self-effacing man, found serenity in painting.
He was one of the painters who liberated the landscape from academic constraints. His parents put him in training with the engraver Jean-Louis Anselin. He turned to painting and passed through the studio of Léon Cogniet in 1828. Cogniet, a neo-classical painter, had little appreciation for the Impressionists, and Cals left the studio fairly quickly. From 1835 onwards, he regularly exhibited portraits and landscapes at the Salon. Before 1841, he married Ermance Canelle de Provisy, whom he had met in the studio of Léon Cogniet, and of whom he painted several portraits. In 1860, the rue Laffitte art dealer Pierre-Firmin Martin, known as "le père Martin", appreciated his painting, and Cals painted portraits of Martin and his wife. This marked the beginning of another period in his career. He sells him a few paintings and introduces him to Count Doria, who becomes his patron and invites him to his castle in Orrouy. From 1869 to 1870, he painted landscapes of the Valois, interiors, women's studies and portraits acquired by the Count's friends.
It was to Cals that Johan Barthold Jongkind's friends entrusted the money they had collected to bring the Dutch painter to Paris, when he was penniless and plunged into deep alcoholism.
In 1863, he exhibited at the Salon des refusés alongside Claude Monet, Edgar Degas and Camille Pissarro. Influenced by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot and Jongkind, he worked in greyer, less fauvist tones, coming closer to the Impressionists without, however, adopting their technique. Divided between Paris and Honfleur since 1871, he finally decided to settle in 1873 in this Normandy port where many painters stayed. A friend of Jongkind, he frequented the resident painters at the Saint-Siméon farm and even painted the farm from the ground up.
Settled with his daughter Marie in Honfleur during


Bibliography 
  
. Arsène Alexandre- A- F. CALS ou le bonheur de peindre-  Georges Petit imprimeur
  
. G Schurr « Les petits maîtres de la peinture »
  
.  L Harembourg « Les paysagistes Français au XIXème siècle »


Museums

Paris
. Musée d’Orsay
  . Musée du Louvre

Provinces

. Agen, Dijon, Honfleur, Reims, Le Havre, Lyon, Toulouse, Tours.