![Centredomeshall](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/Centredomeshall.jpg)
Alphonse Osbert (23 March 1857 – 11 August 1939) was a French
Symbolist painter
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ai ...
.
Educated at the
École des Beaux-Arts
École des Beaux-Arts (; ) refers to a number of influential art schools in France. The term is associated with the Beaux-Arts style in architecture and city planning that thrived in France and other countries during the late nineteenth century ...
, his earliest passion was for the great
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
masters, particularly
Jusepe de Ribera
Jusepe de Ribera (1591 – 1652) was a painter and printmaker, who along with Francisco de Zurbarán, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, and the singular Diego Velázquez, are regarded as the major artists of Spanish Baroque painting. Referring to ...
. A shift away from his academic style took place in the late 1880s under the influence of several acquaintances associated with
Post-Impressionism
Post-Impressionism (also spelled Postimpressionism) was a predominantly French art movement that developed roughly between 1886 and 1905, from the last Impressionist exhibition to the birth of Fauvism. Post-Impressionism emerged as a reaction ag ...
and Symbolism. Osbert abandoned naturalistic painting in favour of a
Pointillist
Pointillism (, ) is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of color are applied in patterns to form an image.
Georges Seurat and Paul Signac developed the technique in 1886, branching from Impressionism. The term "Pointillism" wa ...
technique like that employed by
Seurat
Georges Pierre Seurat ( , , ; 2 December 1859 – 29 March 1891) was a French post-Impressionist artist. He devised the painting techniques known as chromoluminarism and pointillism and used conté crayon for drawings on paper with a rough su ...
and
Signac. Also inspired by
Pierre Puvis de Chavannes
Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (14 December 1824 – 24 October 1898) was a French people, French Painting, painter known for his mural painting, who came to be known as "the painter for France". He became the co-founder and president of the Soci ...
and the Symbolists, he chose to forsake depiction of real-world subject matter, and developed a poetic visual language of his own. His signature style consists of ghostlike
Muse
In ancient Greek religion and mythology, the Muses ( grc, Μοῦσαι, Moûsai, el, Μούσες, Múses) are the inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge embodied in the ...
s in mysterious landscapes bathed in the unearthly light of a sun or moon, rendered with abundant use of the colour blue. In the 1890s he was associated with
Joséphin Péladan and his order, the
Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Cross
The Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Cross (french: Ordre kabbalistique de la Rose-Croix – O.K.R.C.) was France's first ever occult society, established by Stanislas de Guaita and Joséphin Péladan in 1888. Its structure and teaching had simila ...
.
Osbert's later works include a few commissioned
mural
A mural is any piece of graphic artwork that is painted or applied directly to a wall, ceiling or other permanent substrate. Mural techniques include fresco, mosaic, graffiti and marouflage.
Word mural in art
The word ''mural'' is a Spani ...
s, for sites including the Centre Thermal des Dômes in
Vichy
Vichy (, ; ; oc, Vichèi, link=no, ) is a city in the Allier Departments of France, department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of central France, in the historic province of Bourbonnais.
It is a Spa town, spa and resort town and in World ...
(1903 and 1904), and the Church Of Saint-Louis in Vichy (1915).
Patrimoine Vichy
at perso.orange.fr An overview of his career title
'Le peintre symboliste Alphonse Osbert'
written by Véronique Dumas, was published by CNRS
The French National Centre for Scientific Research (french: link=no, Centre national de la recherche scientifique, CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe.
In 2016, it employed 31,637 ...
in 2005.
References
* Gibson, Michael. "Symbolism". Cologne
Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western States of Germany, state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 m ...
: Benedikt Taschen
Taschen is a luxury art book publisher founded in 1980 by Benedikt Taschen in Cologne, Germany. As of January 2017, Taschen is co-managed by Benedikt and his eldest daughter, Marlene Taschen.
History
The company began as Taschen Comics, pu ...
Verlag. 1995. .
External links
Alphonse Osbert biography at artnet
Osbert paintings at symbolistart.net
{{DEFAULTSORT:Osbert, Alphonse
1857 births
1939 deaths
Painters from Paris
19th-century French painters
French male painters
20th-century French painters
20th-century French male artists
French Symbolist painters
École des Beaux-Arts alumni
19th-century French male artists