Woodland View - Antique Oil Painting

Signed oil on wooden panel by the well catalogued French artist Louis Clement Faller (French School - 1819 - 1901). The painting shows an woodland view and is mounted in a superb moulded gilt frame and There is a bronze plaque attached to the frame 'C FALLER - Ecole Francais'. The painting is one of a pair by the artist.

Louis Clement Faller was born in Habsheim , near Mulhouse in 1819. He was a French painter, draftsman and lithographer and was a student of Paul Delaroche then of Eugène Delacroix .

Faller spent some time in the the United States from 1851 to 1860 where he opened a painting studio in New York and was a founder of the American Barbizon School. He then moved back in France to the Chevreuse Valley in 1863 . Upon his arrival in New York, Faller exhibited at the National Academy of Design. In 1854, Faller opened a school of painting.

Whilst in New York, Faller and a group of American landscapers founded the American Barbizon School. He became the leader of a Franco-American pictorial movement, which will be the driving force behind the School of American Landscaping until the end of the 19th century . He was also a theoretician of the outdoor school, landscapes full of life, vibrating surrounding and changing lights, until they become impressions.

The death of his father made him leave New York and with his wife and children he re settled in the Chevreuse Valley, France, where he "began an existence of research and experimentation that only death had to interrupt" . At the Salon of French Artists Faller exhibited landscapes of the Valley of Chevreuse and in the 1866 Salon, he exhibited the Corner of the Old Orsay Park, in 1867, a landscape in 1868 and in 1869 The Hill of the Chevreuse Valley. After this date, Faller no longer exhibited but he was ahead of his time and was very close to impressionism.

Faller lived in Paris between 1871 - 1901, where his wife died in 1889 followed by Fallers tragic death in 1901.

In 1905 the Galeries Vollard held an exhibition of some of Fallers' work at 6 rue Laffitte. Girodie commented "While visiting the Exhibition, I acquired the certainty that Louis Clément Faller had marked his personality in nineteenth- century French art. I then wanted to know the man whose colour on some canvases made the dark drama, the struggle without victory, the annihilatio". He also added not only is Faller a painter of the most curious talent, but from various points of view, Alsace must not ignore his biography".

Dimensions - 55 cm x 42 cm

Ref: 00995

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