Elisabeth Sonrel
French Painter
Tours 1874 – Sceaux 1953
Les Saintes Bergères Collectors' Club |
Elizabeth Sonrel was the daughter of the painter
from Tours, Stephane Sonrel, from whom she received her early
artistic guidance. To further her artistic studies she moved on
to Paris where she became the pupil of the famous artist Jules
Lefebvre at his Ecole des Beaux-Arts. The Tours museum owns her
diploma work, Pax et Labor, which was executed in 1892
at the age of 18 and shows how tremendously precocious she was.
She showed at the Salon des Artistes français
in Paris from 1893 to 1941, especially large watercolors of idealized
women that have both a certain Pre-Raphaelite intensity (since
a journey in Italy, to Florence and Rome where she discovered
the Renaissance painters, she deeply admired Botticelli) and an
affinity to French symbolist painting. She was inspired by Arthurian
romance, biblical subjects, archaic legends and medieval love.
Some of her mystical works include Ames errantes (Salon
of 1894) and Les Esprits de l’abime
(Salon of 1899) and Jeune femme a la tapisserie which has
an inspiration close to the famous symbolist Maxence. She did
not however adhere to the symbolist movement that, besides, totally
ignored her.
Art Nouveau, 1900 Postcard |
Her painting Le Sommeil de la Vierge
(1895) was well known in its time through reproductions and appeared
in the Exposition Universelle in 1900. Some of her paintings (La
Musique, private collection, London) evokes the evanescent
creatures of the Art nouveau from which she sometimes adopted
the adornments and the jewelry.
La Musique Private collection, London |
After 1900, she painted mainly portraits and
picturesque Breton landscapes, and occasionally flowers. Her last
exhibit at the Salon was in 1941 when she was 67 years old. She
is also recorded as having exhibited at Liverpool. Although Elizabeth
Sonrel was known during her lifetime, particularly through the
number of paintings reproduced, it is only in the last 20 years
or so that her work has again received the attention it deserves.
Her painting Cortège de Flore is represented in
the French provincial Musée des Beaux-Arts at Mulhouse
and evokes the pale tones and style of Botticelli. She died at
Sceaux in 1953.
- Bibliography
- Gérald Schurr et Pierre Cabanne, “ Dictionnaire des Petits Maîtres de la peinture, 1820-1920”. Editions de l’Amateur. Volume II, page 422-423.
- Museums
- Musée des Beaux-Arts, Mulhouse, France
- Musée des Beaux-Arts, Tours, France
Πηγή: http://www.renoirinc.com
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