Louis-auguste Lapito (1803-1874) The Painter In The Forest Of Fontainebleau

Louis-Auguste LAPITO
(Joinville-le-Pont, 1803 – Boulogne-Billancourt, 1874)
The painter in the forest of Fontainebleau
Oil on paper mounted on canvas
H. 21 cm; W. 34 cm
Signed lower left

Louis-Auguste Lapito belongs to the second generation of neo-classical landscapers, influenced and trained by artists such as Valenciennes, Jean-Victor Bertin or Louis-Etienne Watelet, but who will develop a more naturalist sensibility, sometimes tinged with romanticism and the picturesque. This generation, led by Corot, thus includes painters such as Caruelle d'Aligny, André Giroux, Guillaume Bodinier, Jules Coignet, Charles-Joseph Rémond, Léon Fleury, Léopold Leprince, etc., all born between 1795 and 1805. These artists still retained an attraction to Italy, but were more travelers and motivated by the discovery of new lands; Lapito would thus visit many French provinces, with a predilection for Dauphiné, Auvergne, Normandy, Corsica, and abroad the Netherlands, Germany and especially Switzerland. But they are also known for having been the first to go to the forest of Fontainebleau at the very beginning of the 1820s, to work there significantly. Lapito represented Fontainebleau throughout his career, with painted studies and works presented at the Salon in the 1830s, 1840s and even at his last participation in 1870. A pupil of Watelet and the history painter François-Joseph Heim, Lapito enjoyed success throughout his career, with several medals and state acquisitions (purchases by Louis-Philippe for the châteaux of Saint-Cloud and Compiègne). He was adept at both plein-air painting and compositions reworked in the studio due to his classical training, in both cases with a precise touch and a very strong sense of color. Among his many critical fortunes, we can cite that of the Journal des Artistes in 1838: "...M. Lapito continues to deserve the suffrages... His drawing is always exact; despite a broad and easy touch, his sites always well chosen, his color generally true although a little golden. Monsieur Lapito's productions are always noted for their picturesque arrangement, and the spiritual way in which they are touched... ». Here it is probably himself that the artist represents, a tiny silhouette lost in the vegetation, with his painter's gear slung on his back. We are at the end of the day, in the forest of Fontainebleau, probably to the north of it, at the viewpoint called the camp of Chailly-en-Bière. At the Salon d'Arras in 1838, Lapito presented a watercolor entitled View taken at Chailly, near Fontainebleau.