Donzel Charles (1824-1889) Pillar And Administrator Of The Crozant School, Animated Landscape, Past

Charming autumn landscape representing two young women at the edge of a waterhole. Our pastel is presented under glass in a beautiful frame decorated with etr pearls gilded with gold leaf. It is signed lower left C. Donzel. This artist, a great lover of Creuse, of painting and a great friend of Corot was a landscape painter nicknamed "the water painter" by his friends Corot, Troyon and Daubigny. Indeed the presence of water is almost omnipresent in all his work, particularly in the landscapes of Limousin, Franche-Comté, Auvergne, Normandy etc... Originally from Besançon, as a child he successively entered the conservatory of the drawing school of Besançon then in the studio of the Master sculptor Clisinger, took theater lessons as well as music to please his mother, he began a career as a violinist and became a laureate at the Paris Conservatory of Music in 1859. His life as a musician was continues through france and belgium alongside his singer wife; When she died, he decided to retire from the world of theater and music to convert to drawing and painting. He opens a Parisian workshop rue des Martyrs. He travels a lot between Bearn, Normandy, Auvergne Limousin and participates in a first exhibition, four years later he will exhibit at the Parisian fair with in particular views of the Haute Vienne. He will meet Adrien Dubouchet then some time later, he will settle in Limoges and will become his friend. He will also be close to Amédée Alluaud. Thanks to them he will meet Corot and work with him in Haute Vienne. In 1861, he fell in love with Crozant and its valleys, he said: "his artistic discovery". From year to year, with each return to Crozant, he finds more and more painters in the village pensions, the link he knows how to create between them, contributes to the constitution of the 2 school of Crozant. Before his arrival, the painters came to the Creuse for a study trip, a tourist walk, with him, they became students of the school of Crozant, making him a pillar, an administrator of this school. He returned regularly to Crozant for twenty five years, indicating the paths of the Sédelle in the morning and making presentations at the hotel Lepinot and the hotel Brigand in the evening. In 1882, he passed the torch of organizer to Eugène Alluaud, the son of his friend and who would animate Crozant during its best years. He also embarked on a new adventure, that of painting on porcelain, notably for the Pouyat and Ardant houses. He is also a painter decorator with the decoration of the prefecture of Macôn before carrying out one of his most beautiful work the decoration of the living room of his friend Adrien Dubouché, five panels painted in the style of Camille Corot. He died on March 20, 1889. Many paintings by him are in the museums of Limoges, Mulhouse, Troyes, Niort, Gueret, etc...