Edouard Debat-ponsan (1847-1913) The Lovers

Edouard DEBAT-PONSAN (1847-1913) Lovers, oil on panel, 22 x 13 cm, signed lower right, exhibition number 32 lower left. Beautiful 19th century gilded wood frame. Framed dimensions: 32 x 24 cm.

Edouard Debat-Ponsan was a student at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Toulouse, then at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris where his master was Cabanel. Second Prix de Rome in 1873, he was one of the most prolific genre painters of his time. He exhibited at the Salon from 1870, winning a second medal in 1874. That same year, he received the Troyon Prize at the Institute. Admitted to the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1889, he was then withdrawn by order, and refused the bronze medal awarded to him by the jury. In 1894 he painted "The Crown of Toulouse" on the ceiling of the Salle des Illustres in the Capitole de Toulouse. Four years later, this convinced Dreyfusard painted a large allegorical canvas entitled "The Truth Coming Out of the Well" (Amboise Museum), which caused a violent break between the artist and the bourgeois society that had made his reputation. He then lost part of his clientele and the esteem of some of his friends and family members. Edouard Debat-Ponsan participated in naturalism, a fundamental movement of the end of the 19th century. His taste for the painting of manners, marked by references to realism, perfectly integrated impressionist techniques.