noted for his allegorical works, scenes of peasant life and Orientalist works.
Biography
Debat-Ponsan was born in
Toulouse
Toulouse ( , ; oc, Tolosa ) is the prefecture of the French department of Haute-Garonne and of the larger region of Occitania. The city is on the banks of the River Garonne, from the Mediterranean Sea, from the Atlantic Ocean and from Par ...
. His younger brother was organist and composer Georges Debat-Ponsan, best known for his organ work Scherzo Symphonique. A pupil of
Cabanel
Alexandre Cabanel (; 28 September 1823 – 23 January 1889) was a French painter. He painted historical, classical and religious subjects in the academic style. He was also well known as a portrait painter. According to ''Diccionario Encicloped ...
, he was famous for his portraits of wealthy citizens and politicians in Paris, paintings of ancient history and scenes of peasant life. As a Republican and veteran of the War of 1870, Debat-Ponsan engaged in the struggle for rehabilitation of Captain
Alfred Dreyfus
Alfred Dreyfus ( , also , ; 9 October 1859 – 12 July 1935) was a French artillery officer of Jewish ancestry whose trial and conviction in 1894 on charges of treason became one of the most polarizing political dramas in modern French history. ...
Émile Zola
Émile Édouard Charles Antoine Zola (, also , ; 2 April 184029 September 1902) was a French novelist, journalist, playwright, the best-known practitioner of the literary school of naturalism, and an important contributor to the development of ...
.
In 1877 he travelled to Italy thanks to a sum of 4,000 francs which was granted to him by the academy. There he saw different painting works, after which he began to paint portraits. In 1882–1883 he made a trip to Istanbul accompanied by his two brothers-in-law, Jules-Arsène Garnier and Henri-Eugène Delacroix (not to be confused with
Eugène Delacroix
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix ( , ; 26 April 1798 – 13 August 1863) was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school.Noon, Patrick, et al., ''Crossing the Channel: Britis ...
). This trip inspired one of his most celebrated works, ''Le Massage, Scène de Hammam'' (''The Massage at the Hamman''; 1883) now in the Museum of Augustins in Toulouse.
He was father of the architect and Grand Prix de Rome winner in 1912,
, who was Prime Minister of France.
Debat-Ponsan died in Paris on 29 January 1913.
Work
His scenes of rural life, a very fashionable genre around 1830–1840, hesitate between the idealism of the peasant world and the militant realism of a
. Debat-Ponsan may have actually intended to refer to more recent events in French history, such as the bloody suppression of the
Commune of Paris
The Paris Commune (french: Commune de Paris, ) was a revolutionary government that seized power in Paris, the capital of France, from 18 March to 28 May 1871.
During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, the French National Guard had defended ...
List of Orientalist artists
This is an incomplete list of artists who have produced works on Orientalist subjects, drawn from the Islamic world or other parts of Asia. Many artists listed on this page worked in many genres, and Orientalist subjects may not have formed a m ...
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Orientalism
In art history, literature and cultural studies, Orientalism is the imitation or depiction of aspects in the Eastern world. These depictions are usually done by writers, designers, and artists from the Western world. In particular, Orientalist p ...