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Biography

(b Paris, 15 Feb 1802; d Annet-sur-Marne, 27 June 1868). French painter and pastellist. The son of a porcelain-maker, he first learnt painting in the studio of a porcelain decorator. After a period as a theatre decorator and a dancer, he became a pupil of the animal painter Joseph François Pâris (1784–1871). He devoted himself to landscape painting and became one of the precursors of plein-air painting. Referring to himself as a ‘romantique-naturaliste’, he was ... (view more)

Grove Art excerpts - Electronic ©2003, Oxford Art Online

(b Paris, 15 Feb 1802; d Annet-sur-Marne, 27 June 1868). French painter and pastellist. The son of a porcelain-maker, he first learnt painting in the studio of a porcelain decorator. After a period as a theatre decorator and a dancer, he became a pupil of the animal painter Joseph François Pâris (1784–1871). He devoted himself to landscape painting and became one of the precursors of plein-air painting. Referring to himself as a ‘romantique-naturaliste’, he was a member of the new Naturalist school of landscape painting that emerged in the 1830s in opposition to the official classicism of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. He was one of the first to paint sur le motif (from life) in the forest of Fontainebleau, and he also made frequent visits to Barbizon, joining that group of artists known as ‘le groupe de Marlotte’. His works consist largely of views of Normandy and the Paris environs; he concentrated on thatched cottages, farmyards, prairies, ponds and riverbanks. He made his début at the Salon in 1831 with a View of the Village of Pissevache, Bas-Valais and continued to exhibit there until 1863. His early style of the 1830s and 1840s is characterized by splashes of thick paint, a roughly textured paint surface, a bright palette and a range of lively tones, as in Prairie (1831; Paris, Resche). Between 1850 and 1860 he painted a series of images of rivers and ponds with boats and fishermen. These were executed in a style very close to that of Jules Dupré, with whom he was working at the time. The surface of these paintings is smooth, the touch more discrete with a dominantly light-coloured tonality, as in Landscape: The Environs of Paris (1854; Paris, Louvre). Flers was also noted for his pastels, which he exhibited at the Salon from 1843, especially in the 1840s. In 1846 he published his theories of drawing in pastel in the journal L’Artiste , and these did much to revive interest in the medium. In common with other artists associated with Barbizon, in the early 1860s Flers experimented with making clichés-verre.  (hide)

Grove Art excerpts - Electronic ©2003, Oxford Art Online

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