Jean Henri Durand Brager

JEAN HENRI DURAND BRAGER (France,1814-1879).
"Coastal Landscape".
Oil on panel
Signed in the lower right corner.
Size: 23 x 40 cm; 52 x 68 cm (frame).
Jean-Baptiste Henri Durand-Brager was a French painter who studied with Gudin and Eugène Isabey. In 1840 he accompanied the fleet that repatriated Napoleon's remains from Saint Helena, an island that provided him with motifs for several paintings. He spent much of his time travelling; he went to Buenos Aires with the squadron, to Montevideo on board a French warship, and explored Uruguay and Brazil; he accompanied expeditions to Tangiers and Mogador, and to Madagascar. He painted views of the places he visited, as well as naval battles and sea pieces. In the 1850s, he was in the Crimea during the war with Russia, where he devoted himself to photography as well as painting. He was one of fifteen photographers, including Felice Beato, Roger Fenton and James Robertson, who photographed soldiers, barracks, camp life and battlefields. He later returned to Constantinople, where he took photographs of the landscape, monuments and people. He was a versatile painter, producing naval scenes, genre, genre, genre, landscape and orientalist works. There are several of his works in the Versailles galleries.