Louis Robert Carrier Belleuse

LOUIS ROBERT CARRIER BELLEUSE (Paris, 1848- 1913).
"Troubadour resting".
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 54 x 73,5 cm; 67 x 86 cm (frame).
Canvas representing a young page boy in a luxurious interior, surrounded by Japanese vases. The scene is treated with great technical refinement and a sensitivity typical of the decorative art of the late nineteenth century, highlighting both the quality of the drawing and the thoroughness with which the objects and textures have been represented, especially the oriental porcelains, whose presence in the composition alludes to the European taste for japonism, an aesthetic trend that deeply influenced the decorative and pictorial arts of the time.
The author of the work, Louis Robert Carrier-Belleuse was a representative figure of French transitional art. A painter of genre scenes and urban landscapes, as well as a notable sculptor, Carrier-Belleuse belonged to a prominent family of artists: he was the son of the renowned sculptor Albert Carrier-Belleuse, and brother of the painter Pierre Carrier-Belleuse. His artistic training initially took place in his father's workshop and then continued under the tutelage of Alexandre Cabanel and Gustave Boulanger at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, which is reflected in the academic solidity of his style and the compositional elegance of his works.
He made his debut as a painter at the Paris Salon of 1870, but later turned almost exclusively to sculpture, a discipline in which he exhibited regularly between 1889 and 1912. His career was recognized with an honorary mention in 1887, a silver medal at the Universal Exposition of 1889, and he was named Knight of the Legion of Honor, one of the highest awards granted by the French state. In addition to his work as an independent artist, Carrier-Belleuse played an important role as artistic director of the Choisy-le-Roi earthenware factory, for which he designed ornamental models.
In his pictorial production, Louis Robert Carrier-Belleuse is characterized by a meticulous and almost photographic representation of everyday scenes of the Paris of his time. This attention to detail and urban life is combined in some of his works with a taste for exoticism and bourgeois refinement, as is evident in the canvas described here.