Auguste Ravier (1814-1895) View of Venice Basilica Santa Maria Della Salute Oil on panel circa 1840
A romantic view of Venice is portrayed in this beautiful sunrise over Venice, with the Basilica of Santa Maria della Salute in the background.
Elegant oil on wood, signed lower left by Auguste Ravier, most likely painted during his trip to Italy in the 1840s.
Sizes unframed: W 15.35 In. - H 10.23 In.
Sizes framed: W 19.29 In. - H 14.17 In.
Fine original condition in a hand carved and gilded wooden frame.
Biography:
François-Auguste Ravier was a French painter born in Lyon on May 4, 1814 and died in Morestel on June 26, 1895.
Is a frequent visitor to Théodore Caruelle d'aligny's studio, Ravier befriended Jean-Baptiste Corot, then Charles-François Daubigny.
He traveled to Italy in the 1840s, where he probably met Ingres and certainly many other painters, including, in Rome, Jean-Victor Schnetz, then director of the Villa Medici, and Hippolyte Flandrin, as well as many other Villa residents.
He settled in Crémieu in 1850, then in Morestel in 1868, seduced by the luminosity of the landscapes.
The welcome and advice that this Dauphiné landscape painter gave to many artists gave rise to works of similar style to his own.
Between his works and those of the Italian Antonio Fontanesi, there is such a similarity of theme and technique, that Ravier, a few years later, no longer knew what he had taught Fontanesi and what Fontanesi had taught him.
These artists formed not a movement, but an interest for Ravier, who dared and experimented with new perspectives. Much later, his followers were grouped together under the name École de Morestel by a Grenoble art historian.
An admirer of Turner, François-Auguste Ravier worked with color in thick matter, to the point of obsession, never neglecting the lines always visible beneath the pigment, favoring light and shadow. In this respect, he can be considered one of the precursors of Impressionism. Ravier went beyond the limits of the landscape genre by introducing the boldness of color. His friend Félix Thiollier from Saint-Etienne was his first biographer.
Museums:
USA :
Cleveland Museum of Arts.
National Gallery of Art Washington.
France :
Musée Faure – Aix en Provence.
Musée Albert-André – Bagnols sur Cède – Le Nuage Rose.
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Brest – Paysage au couchant, huile sur bois.
Musée Thomas Henry – Cherbourg Octeville.
Musée de Grenoble – Soleil couchant, huile sur carton.
Musée des Beaux-arts de Lyon – La Rive de l’Étang, huile sur toile.
Maison Ravier – Morestel.
Musée d’Orsay Paris – L’Étang de la Levaz à Morestel, huile sur toile.
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims – Vieil arbre dans la plaine, 1868, huile sur toile.
Musée d’Art à Toulon.
Royaume-Uni :
Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge – Paysage au coucher du soleil, huile sur papier marouflé sur toile.
