=== Family ===
=== Family ===
Antoine Ponthus-Cinier was born in Lyon, France on August 29, 1812, on Rue Saint-Jean, into a lower middle-class family. His father, Jean Joseph Ponthus Cinier, was secretary of the municipal administration before becoming clerk of the Royal Court of Lyon <ref>Félix Desvernay, Le vieux Lyon à l’exposition internationale urbaine de 1914, Lyon, 1915. p.24</ref>. His mother was Antoinette Novet (born around 1778, daughter of François Novet, who was executed in 1794 after the siege of Lyon). The painter’s brother, Jean-Claude (born January 18, 1800), was a designer in a factory when he was drafted into military service in 1820. In 1844, he was listed as a partner in the Tarare factory that produced plush for hats (JB.E. et P. Martin, in Paris, rue Rambeau).
Antoine Ponthus-Cinier was born in Lyon, France on August 29, 1812, on Rue Saint-Jean, into a lower middle-class family. His father, Jean Joseph Ponthus Cinier, was secretary of the municipal administration before becoming clerk of the Royal Court of Lyon <ref>Félix Desvernay, Le vieux Lyon à l’exposition internationale urbaine de 1914, Lyon, 1915. p.24</ref>. His mother was Antoinette Novet (born around 1778, daughter of François Novet, who was executed in 1794 after the siege of Lyon). The painter’s brother, Jean-Claude (born January 18, 1800), was a designer in a factory when he was drafted into military service in 1820. In 1844, he was listed as a partner in the Tarare factory that produced plush for hats (JB.E. et P. Martin, in Paris, rue Rambeau).
=== Education ===
=== Education ===
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French Artist
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Antoine Claude Ponthus-Cinier |
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|---|---|
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| Born | August, 29 1812
Lyon, France |
| Died | January, 17 1885
Lyon |
| Occupation | Artist |
| Notable work | Adam and Eve chased from Paradise, The Tree Fellers. |
Antoine Ponthus-Cinier was a French painter born in Lyon on August 29, 1812, and died on January 17, 1885. He is considered one of the leaders of the neoclassical movement in Lyon and adopted a pastoral idylic or arcadian style. His works cover many sites in Italy and southern France. He claimed the heritage of 18th-century veduta painting, represented at the time by Giovanni Antonio Canaletto, while seeking to bring a more romantic atmosphere to his work.
Enrolled in 1829 at the “École des Beaux-Arts” in Lyon, where he does not seem to have attended, he later became a student of Paul Delaroche in Paris. He became a renowned painter in 1841 when he won the Second Grand Prize of Rome for historical landscape painting with Adam and Eve Expelled from the Garden of Eden. He spent two years in Italy between 1842 and 1844, staying in Florence, Rome, Genoa, and Naples.[1] Upon his return, he made a long journey through the Dauphiné, the Dombes, Provence, the Alps, Savoy, and the Pyrenees, eventually settling in Lyon, where he remained until his death. He became a member of the “Société des aquafortistes de Paris”, and his engravings were highly successful. He exhibited historical landscapes and simple landscapes in Lyon between 1837 and 1885, in Paris between 1841 and 1867, and in many regional exhibitions notably in Montpellier, Bordeaux, Strasbourg, Nimes, Geneva, Rouen and Dijon. The works exhibited included paintings, gouache-washed Indian ink drawings, watercolors, and a few etchings. In his will, he bequeathed 50 works on paper to the Musem of Fine Arts in Lyon. The municipal library of Lyon has another collection of his works
[2]
. An annual stipend of 1,000 francs for a prize bearing his name (an annual competition for “Landscape from a Decorative Perspective”) is awarded by the École des Beaux-Arts in Lyon. His studio was auctioned off in Lyon in March 1885. The Fine Arts Museums of Lyon, Chalon-sur-Saône, Besançon, Brou, Toulon, Puy-en-Velay, Chambéry, Chantilly, Valence and Cleveland, Ohio have works by him in their collections.
Antoine Ponthus-Cinier was born in Lyon, France on August 29, 1812, on Rue Saint-Jean, into a lower middle-class family. His father, Jean Joseph Ponthus Cinier, was secretary of the municipal administration before becoming clerk of the Royal Court of Lyon [3]. His mother was Antoinette Novet (born around 1778, daughter of François Novet, who was executed in 1794 after the siege of Lyon). The painter’s brother, Jean-Claude (born January 18, 1800), was a designer in a factory when he was drafted into military service in 1820. In 1844, he was listed as a partner in the Tarare factory that produced plush for hats (JB.E. et P. Martin, in Paris, rue Rambeau)[4].
Antoine enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts in Lyon in 1829, but according to Marius Audin and Eugène Vial, he did not attend[5]. He became a student of Paul Delaroche at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris before traveling to Italy for two years from 1842 to 1844. This trip would be the highlight of his artistic training.
Antoine’s training in Paris and his artistic career led him to become a landscape painter, a genre created in Italy in the 18th century. Before traveling to Italy, the works he valued most were historical landscape compositions based on biblical themes (Adam and Eve expelled from the Garden of Eden). After his trip to Italy, he tried to adapt his inspiration to pure landscapes combining French Romanticism and the Italian illusionist realism of his time. What Antoine loved was an architectural structure with water in the form of a sheet or a pool that softened it, while vegetation enlivened it and the sky illuminated it. He liked the reminiscence of Italian landscapes in this combination, where traces of man, canals, roads, bridges, and man himself bear witness to his direct presence. Art critics of his century, such as Jouve, regret this repetition of a landscape deemed too perfect, while praising Antoine’s technique: “We will not dispute Mr. Ponthus-Cinier’s rare and distinguished qualities, his fine and suave touch, his charming and truthful colors, and his art of illuminating a canvas. But isn’t this striking family resemblance found in all his landscapes a flaw in his talent? Look at nature… isn’t it infinitely varied in all its aspects?”[6]
Antoine’s graphic work can be divided into several types. He used drawings in particular to create landscape paintings based on his observations. In 1840, he won second prize in the sketching competition with La Samaritaine. During his stay in Italy, he built up a collection of drawings that he later used as sources and models for his subsequent works. There are a significant number of Roman landscapes, mainly views of historical landscapes created between 1842 and 1844, executed in Indian inks. A distinction can be made between “studies” for the observation of a particular landscape and wash drawings that may constitute the final state of a work.
Antoine Ponthus-Cinier won the second Grand prize of Rome for historical landscapes in 1841, with the presentation of “Adam and Eve chased from Terestrial Paradise”. This painting is currently the property of the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon. His classical acedemic arcadian painting style was a success with the artistic societies of the period. This led to many oppurtunities to exhibit paintings at the various artistic salons both in Paris and especially Lyon but also in many of the regional salons particularly in the south of France. Exhibitions in Bordeaux, Grenoble, Geneva, Nimes, Besancon, Montpellier, Strasbourg and Toulouse are found. Over 250 of his paintings were presented at the various salon exhibitions. Antoine Ponthus-Cinier currently has oil paintings in ten museums. Museum of Fine Arts in Lyon has 54 works 3 oils and 51 on paper.
Other museums with his works are in Besancon, Bourg-en-Bresse, Chalon-sur-Saone, Chantilly, Puy-en-Velay, Toulon, Valence, Vichy and Cleveland in Ohio.
Notes and references
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- ^ Lyon municipal library: Voyage en Italie / Ponthus-Cinier. Res Est 29293. He notably realized many drawings of Italian landscapes with historical ruins and monuments.
- ^ Lyon Municipal Library: Rés Est 29294-01 to 03
- ^ Félix Desvernay, Le vieux Lyon à l’exposition internationale urbaine de 1914, Lyon, 1915. p.24
- ^ Paysagistes lyonnais, 1800-1900 (préf. Madeleine Rocher-Jauneau, Élisabeth Hardouin-Fugier et Étienne Grafe), Museum of Fine Arts, Lyon, 1984 p.159
- ^ Vial E. and Audin M., Dictionnaire des artistes et ouvriers d’arts du Lyonnais, volume 2, Paris, 1918
- ^ Review written by Jouve A. in the journal Le Courrier de Lyon on the 5th of February 1845
- Desvernay F., Le vieux Lyon à l’exposition internationale urbaine de 1914, Lyon, 1915
- Gouttenoir B., Dictionnaire des peintres et sculpteurs à Lyon aux XIXe et XXe siècles, La Taillanderie, 2002
- Harambourg L., Dictionnaire des peintres paysagistes français du 19th century, Idées et calendes, 1985
- Élisabeth Hardouin-Fugier, Le peintre et l’animal en France au 19th century, édition de l’amateur, Paris, 2001
- Élisabeth Hardouin-Fugier et E. Grafe, Répertoire des peintres lyonnais du 19th century en Bugey, Centre d’Art Lacoux, 1980
- Revue de la bibliothèque de Lyon, september 2008, number 20
- nameless, Paysagistes lyonnais, 1800-1900, Lyon Museum of Fine Arts, september 1984
- Nameless, Livret du S.A.D.A, Lyon, years 1839 to 1885
- Nameless, Salon de 1942, société lyonnaise des Beaux-Arts, 1942
- Gérald Schurr et Cabanne P., Dictionnaire des Petits Maîtres de la peinture, 1820-1920, volume II, les éditions de l’amateur, Paris, 1979
- Vial A. et Bailly-Herzberg J., L’eau-forte de peintre, la société des aquafortistes, volume II, Léonce Laget, Paris, 1972
- Vial E. et Audin M., Dictionnaire des artistes et ouvriers d’arts du Lyonnais, volume 2, Paris, 1918
