Louis-auguste Auguin (1824-1903), Landscape Of Charente Study Of Sky, Oil On Canvas

Louis-Auguste AUGUIN
Rochefort-sur-Mer 1824 - Bordeaux 1903

Charente landscape, sky study

Around 1880-1890
Oil on canvas
Signed in red lower right
35 x 45.5 cm
A small patch is noted on the back (old tear) , original canvas. The painting is in very good condition.

   Louis Augustin Auguin is considered the leader of the Bordeaux school of landscapers. He trained in the workshop of landscaper Jules Coignet. He also received advice from Corot who would become his friend. Auguin travels across France, and discovers Languedoc, Limousin, Normandy and the Pyrenees in particular. He returned to his region after the revolution of 1848, and opened a drawing school in Rochefort. Along with Corot, Courbet and Hippolyte Pradelles, he formed an ephemeral open-air workshop called the “Port-Berteau group”. The four painters exhibited their works in Saintes in 1863. Auguin's paintings are still marked by Coignet's lessons. He demonstrates a concern for truth which also betrays the influence of Courbet. The same year, Auguin moved his workshop to Bordeaux and opened a painting school attended by a large number of landscape artists from the Bordeaux school. He regularly participates in the Salon de la Société des Amis des Arts de Bordeaux as well as in the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, and obtains several awards. He also exhibits abroad, in Vienna, Amsterdam and Antwerp. In the 1880s he abandoned his romantically inspired representations of setting suns to begin an “impressionist” evolution. Our painting is fully characteristic of his new way of painting. However, he does not renounce the spirit of his painting, full of grandeur and serenity, devoid of any human presence suggesting an intense relationship with nature.