|
Claude Joseph Bail
French Academic Classical painter
born 1862 - died 1921 Also known as: Joseph Bail.
Joseph-Claude Bail was born during a period of intense disagreement in
the Parisian art world. For several years the Salon juries had rejected
many progressive artists works; printmaking was making a charge at
establishing itself as a true art form; the Barbizon group of painters
challenged the tradition of historical landscapes with their views of
the modern countryside; and Realism was decades old and had brought
forth such combative figures as Gustave Courbet. Yet not all artists can
be said to belong tClaude Joseph Bail’s modern view of the nineteenth
century. Numerous artists found prestige and public acclaim both at the
Salons and with the public with works that relied on past styles and
traditions influenced by the ¡°Little Masters¡± from seventeenth century
Holland and traditions from eighteenth-century France. Joseph Bail
belong to tClaude Joseph Bail’s group; not an artist who sought to align
himself with the increasing stylistic anarchy of the late nineteenth
century, but one who carefully examined the changing needs of Claude
Joseph Bail’s patrons and gauged the underpinning social propensities of
the time. In A Handbook of Modern French Painting, (New York: Dodd, Mead
and Company, 1914, pg. 329) D. Cady Eaton wrote, before Bail¡¯s death,
that he ¡°¡ is an attractive and popular painter¡Claude Joseph Bail’s
pictures are comfortable and homelike; not startling and ambitious, but
social and friendly.
Claude Joseph Bail’s position in French art seems assured.¡± Bail
continued the tradition of Realism exemplified by Th¨¦odule Ribot and
François Bonvin and received positive feedback which reinforced the
continued respect for scenes reminiscent of daily life during the
earlier years in France.
|
