Alphonse Osbert (23 March 1857 – 11 August 1939) was a French

Symbolist Symbolism was a late 19th-century art movement of French and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts seeking to represent absolute truths symbolically through language and metaphorical images, mainly as a reaction against naturalism and realis ...

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 ...

. 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 centur ...

, 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. Referrin ...

. 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 ...

and Symbolism. Osbert abandoned naturalistic painting in favour of a Pointillist technique like that employed by Seurat and Signac. Also inspired by

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (14 December 1824 – 24 October 1898) was a French 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 Société Nationale des Beau ...

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 ...

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 Joséphin Péladan (28 March 1858 in Lyon – 27 June 1918 in Neuilly-sur-Seine) was a French novelist and Martinist. His father was a journalist who had written on prophecies, and professed a philosophic-occult Catholicism. He established th ...

and his order, the Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Cross. 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 Spanis ...

s, for sites including the Centre Thermal des Dômes in

Vichy Vichy (, ; ; oc, Vichèi, link=no, ) is a city in the Allier department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of central France, in the historic province of Bourbonnais. It is a spa and resort town and in World War II was the capital of ...

(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 31,63 ...

in 2005.

References

* Gibson, Michael. "Symbolism".

Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 millio ...

: 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, ...

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