Eugène Villain - Still Life With Fruits

Eugène VILLAIN Paris, 1821 - Paris, 1897 Oil on panel 21 x 36.5 cm (28 x 44 cm with the frame) Signed lower left "E. Villain" Beautiful 19th century gilded wooden frame Eugène Villain first studied painting in Paris with Nicolas Charlet and Léon Cogniet from whom he learned the art of portraiture. But he was especially attached to François Bonvin and was part of "the small colony of painters of Vaugirard" who met at the cabaret of Father Bonvin. His first still life that got him noticed at the salon was in 1850 his "silver cup" (with a plate of apples and a coffee pot) of great naturalism. He then specialized in "kitchen" still lifes in a beautiful style with beautiful colors, with a frank touch and a lot of effect. There was "the chicken" (Douai Museum) or even the soft cheese (Orsay Museum). Villain, to use his words, wanted to "make it fine, fresh and bright", that's what "being distinguished" is! "Is it fine? Is it blond? It's powerful, isn't it? Does it ring?" he said, "Is it worth my chicken? Is it worth my soft cheese?". Regarding his fruits, Eugène Villain's biographer, Frédéric Henriet, spoke in 1882 of his "peaches with opulent velvet, his apples with golden skin, stained with cheerful red New Year's Eve, his plums with juicy transparencies" and his "amber raisins and chasselas". "Villain is a dilettante in his own way, a spontaneous, sincere person who needs to be moved to have all his flavor and who will never paint with a measuring rod. Every year he sends a small canvas that is a model of the genre. How many times have I not surprised, in the morning, some favored person of the day, or even some member of the jury meditating before this healthy work as before an example and a lesson! » Villain was « convinced that, in the genre in which he excels, the simplest compositions are the most interesting because they caress the eye without tiring it » « It was Chardin's aesthetic that never overloaded his compositions ». When Bonvin received the cross of the Legion of Honor in 1870, Fréderic Henriet recounts that Bonvin said to Villain « Why don't you have it like me? You earned it like your comrades. »!