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Hippolyte Camille Delpy
(1842 - 1910)
Hippolyte-Camille Delpy studied with Daubigny as well as Corot. A
contemporary of the Impressionists, he blended the subject matter that
he adopted from Daubigny with the brighter colors and looser paint
handling that were trademarks of his own generation to create
distinctive new visions of many of the landscapes first explored by the
Barbizon artists. Delpy was born in Joigny. He became interested in
painting when he met Daubigny around 1855, and in 1858 Daubigny took on
Delpy as an informal student. During the summers, Delpy (who was close
in age to Daubigny's own son, Karl, also a painter) traveled with
Daubigny on excursions aboard the studio-boat "Le Botin." Through
Daubigny, Delpy met Corot who encouraged and occasionally advised the
young painter. In 1869, Delpy sent his first paintings to the Salon; in
December he began to paint small snow scenes, as Pissarro and Monet were
also doing during that remarkable winter. In the early 1870s, Delpy
worked often in Ville d'Avray, Corot's favored country site, and in
Auvers where Daubigny lived. He began friendships with Pissarro and
Cézanne who shared his admiration of Daubigny. His Salon paintings of
1873 and 1874 were well received. In 1875, he exhibited a snow scene at
the Salon for the first time and was complemented by the critic
Castagnary for his originality. In 1876, Delpy organized a sale of his
own paintings at the Hôtel Drouot, an unusual undertaking. The sale was
favorably announced in several newspapers and was a significant success,
with all 45 works sold. That summer he moved his family to Bois-le-Roi
outside the Forest of Fontainebleau. At the Salon of 1880, he exhibited
a potato harvesting scene, his first landscape with large-scale figures.
Throughout the 1880s he alternated work on the Normandy coast with stays
in the Forest of Fontainebleau and in Paris. Delpy received his first
Salon medal in 1884. In 1886, he traveled to the United States as part
of a team that painted a panorama of the battle of Manassas (American
Civil War) in Washington D. C. At the Exposition Universelle of 1889,
Delpy was awarded an honorable mention. The Galerie Georges Petit, a
leading dealer in contemporary French paintings, began to handle his
work and subsequently organized several one-man exhibitions of Delpy's
paintings. Petit was simultaneously promoting Pissarro and Sisley and
would later show Monet. In 1908 Delpy was given an exhibition at the
prestigious Grafton Galleries in London. He died in 1910. Alexandra
Murphy.
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