Landscape with a Pond

1875·Black chalk on ivory laid paper laid down on blue laid paper partially discolored to tan·9.5 × 15.3 cm (3 3/4 × 6 1/16 in.)

<p>“Jean-Jacques Henner is as little known today as he was famous during his lifetime,” quipped Rodolphe Rapetti in his 2003 monograph on the artist. Winning the Prix de Rome in 1858, Henner found inspiration in the chiaroscuro (strong contrasts of light and dark) and sfumato (smoky or hazy effects) of Caravaggio’s art. When he returned to his native Alsace in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War, his works became even dreamier and more deeply infused with melancholy.</p>

Catalogue

Year: 1875
Medium: Black chalk on ivory laid paper laid down on blue laid paper partially discolored to tan
Dimensions: 9.5 × 15.3 cm (3 3/4 × 6 1/16 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Jean-Jacques Henner

Artist

Jean-Jacques Henner

Drawing

Jean-Jacques Henner was a French academic painter specializing in historical and allegorical subjects executed in a refined neoclassical idiom. Active throughout the nineteenth century, he maintained allegiance to history painting as the highest genre, working in oils with a restrained palette dominated by warm earth tones and carefully modulated flesh tones. His compositions privileged linear clarity and mythological narrative over the chromatic experimentation of his Impressionist contemporaries. Henner remained a central figure in the École des Beaux-Arts tradition until his death in 1905.

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