Charles-Frédéric Soehnée (3 November 1789, in

Landau in der Pfalz Landau (), officially Landau in der Pfalz (, ), is an autonomous (''kreisfrei'') town surrounded by the Südliche Weinstraße ("Southern Wine Route") district of southern Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is a university town (since 1990), a long ...

as Carl-Friederich Söhne – 1 May 1878, in

Le Pré-Saint-Gervais Le Pré-Saint-Gervais (; simply known by locals as Le Pré, i.e. "the meadow") is a commune in the northeastern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the center of Paris. With a density of 25,643 inhabitants per square kilometres as of 2 ...

in Paris) was a French painter. He was the fourth child of merchant Jacques Frédéric Soehnée and Caroline Wilhelmine (née Krueger). In 1797 his family founded the company "Soehnée l'aîné & Cie". Their factories were located in the cities of Mulhouse, Colmar and Munster in Alsace. Their headquarters were in Paris where Soehnée eventually moved with his family. In Paris Soehnée studied under the neoclassical painter Anne Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson. His classmate and friend Pierre Louis de Laval (1790-1842) painted a portrait of him in 1812. In 1818, he executed a group of more than one hundred drawings, watercolors, and at least one lithograph, most of which depict grotesque scenes of imaginary beasts and travelers against the backdrop of desert landscapes.Mauries, Patrick ''Charles Frédéric Soehnée.'' Gallimard / Galerie J-M Le Fell 2006. Soehnée researched and studied the techniques of the old masters, culminating in a technical treatise published in 1822 where he disputed the commonly held belief that

Jan van Eyck Jan van Eyck ( ; ; – 9 July 1441) was a Flemish people, Flemish painter active in Bruges who was one of the early innovators of what became known as Early Netherlandish painting, and one of the most significant representatives of Early Nort ...

invented oil painting. In it, he argued that the a mixture of encaustic and varnish could be the only explanation for the existence of much older paintings. Soehnée went on to make a varnish and co-found the company ''Soehnée Frères'' in 1829 with one of his brothers, and became wealthy as a result. As far as is known, he never painted again after 1818. Soehnée possessed a collection of drawings from Baroque painter

Joseph Parrocel Joseph Parrocel (3 October 1646 – 1 March 1704) was a French Baroque painter, best known for his paintings and drawings of battle scenes. He was born in Brignoles, into an artistic family that produced fourteen painters over six generations. H ...

(1646–1704), which are now owned by the

Louvre The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is a national art museum in Paris, France, and one of the most famous museums in the world. It is located on the Rive Droite, Right Bank of the Seine in the city's 1st arrondissement of Paris, 1st arron ...

Bibliography

Mauries, Patrick ''Charles Frédéric Soehnée.'' Gallimard / Galerie J-M Le Fell 2006.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Soehnee, Charles-Frederic 1878 deaths 1789 births 19th-century French painters 19th-century German painters French male painters German male painters People from Landau 19th-century French male artists