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Hugues Merle

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French painter
Hugues Merle
The First Thorns of Knowledge (Les premières épines de la science), 1864, Dallas Museum of Art
Born(1822-04-28)April 28, 1822
La Sône, France
Died1881 (aged 58–59)
Paris, France
NationalityFrench
Known forPainting
ChildrenGeorges Merle

Hugues Merle (1822–1881) was a French painter who mostly depicted sentimental or moral subjects. He has often been compared to William-Adolphe Bouguereau.

Biography

Hugues Merle was born in 1822 in La Sône. He studied painting with Léon Cogniet. Merle started exhibiting at the Salon (Paris) in 1847. He received second class prizes in 1861 and 1863. In 1866 he was made Chevalier of the Legion of Honor.

Hugues Merle became a friend of Paul Durand-Ruel in the early 1860s. Durand-Ruel had started buying paintings by Merle in 1862 and introduced the artist to painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau. Merle was later often compared to Bouguereau and “became a considerable rival of Bouguereau in subject and treatment”. In the mid-1860s, Merle painted several portraits of Paul Durand-Ruel, his wife, and their son, John.

Hugues Merle died in 1881 in Paris. His son Georges Merle also became a painter.

Influence

David Lynch and Mark Frost's Twin Peaks TV series character the Log Lady resembles Hugues Merle's painting The Lunatic of Étretat (1871).

Gallery

References

  1. (in French)Mairie de La Sône, registre année 1822, naissance, n°5 (Michaël Vottero, « Hugues Merle (1822-1881) Peinture de genre et marché de l'art sous le Second Empire », Bulletin de la société de l'histoire de l'art français, 2011, p. 145-216, note 2).
  2. Zafran, Eric (1984). European Art in the High Museum.
  3. Whiteley, Linda (1979). Accounting for Tastes. Oxford Art Journal. p. 26.
  4. Stranahan, C.H. (1917). A History of French Painting. p. 398.
  5. Birmingham Museum of Art (2010). Birmingham Museum of Art: A Guide to the Collection. London: Giles. p. 142. ISBN 978-1-904832-77-5. Archived from the original on 2011-09-10. Retrieved 2011-06-27.
  6. "MacGuffin | Log Lady".

Bibliography

  • European Art in the High Museum, by Eric M. Zafran, Atlanta, 1984
  • "Accounting for Tastes", by Linda Whiteley, Oxford Art Journal, Vol. 2, Art and Society (Apr., 1979), pp. 25–28

[REDACTED] Media related to Hugues Merle at Wikimedia Commons

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