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

painter Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...

. Educated at the

École des Beaux-Arts ; ) refers to a number of influential art schools in France. The term is associated with the Beaux-Arts architecture, Beaux-Arts style in architecture and city planning that thrived in France and other countries during the late nineteenth centu ...

, his earliest passion was for the great Spanish masters, particularly

Jusepe de Ribera Jusepe de Ribera (; baptised 17 February 1591 – 3 November 1652) was a Spanish painter and Printmaking, printmaker. Ribera, Francisco de Zurbarán, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, and the singular Diego Velázquez, are regarded as the major artist ...

. 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 a ...

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 Beaux-Ar ...

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 Greek mythology, mythology, the Muses (, ) were the Artistic inspiration, inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge embodied in the poetry, lyric p ...

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. Osbert's later works include a few commissioned

mural A mural is any piece of Graphic arts, 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'' ...

s, for sites including the Centre Thermal des Dômes in Vichy (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 (, , CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,637 staff, including 11,137 tenured researchers, 13,415 eng ...

in 2005.

References

* Gibson, Michael. "Symbolism".

Cologne Cologne ( ; ; ) is the largest city of the States of Germany, German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with nearly 1.1 million inhabitants in the city pr ...

: 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 Taschen and his eldest daughter, Marlene Taschen. History The company began as Tasch ...

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