Victor Danvin (1802-1842) - Cross and costumes of Le Tréport

Victor Marie Felix DANVIN
(Paris, 1802 – Paris, 1842)

Cross and costumes of Le Tréport

Oil on canvas
Signed and dated lower right
58x88cm
1838

Exhibition: Paris Salon of 1838 under number 378. According to the catalog, the painting remained the property of the artist after the Salon.

Landscape painter, Victor Marie Félix Danvin was born in Paris in 1802. Entered the School of Fine Arts on September 3, 1818, he followed the teachings of Pierre Guérin (1774-1833) and Guillaume Guillon Lethière (1760 - 1832). After a quick stint in the studio of Louis Etienne Watelet (1782-1866), he joined that of the brand new Prix de Rome, Jean Charles Joseph Rémond (1795-1875). From 1829, he traveled through Switzerland and various French provinces: Savoie, Dauphiné, Auvergne, Brittany and Normandy. Danvin made his debut at the Paris Salon of 1831 and exhibited there regularly in the following years. Professor at the Polytechnic School from 1840, he presented his works at the Salon until the posthumous exhibition of 1842. Following a second attack of apoplexy - a first having struck him in February 1840, he left to take the waters at Vichy in July 1841. Tired, he continued his journey towards Thiers, then towards Lyon, before, sick , he returns to Paris. Danvin died there on February 13, 1842, victim of a ruptured aneurysm. Despite the brevity of his existence and the rarity of his works, Victor Danvin's paintings find a public sensitive to this “wonderfully delicate and sensitive artist”. His wife, Constance-Amélie born Lambert in Lille on May 3, 1810, will begin at the 1844 salon with an "Entrée de Vichy les Bains" and will cease to appear after the 1848 salon. Several of Danvin's works have been reproduced by engravers such as Lhuillier or lithographers such as Challamel, in particular our painting Cross and Costumes by Tréport, in the book La Revue des Peintres of 1838 printed by Aubert in Paris. Here is the descriptive excerpt: "Beneath this caption Cross and costumes of Tréport, Mr. Danvin shows us in his painting on the right and in the background the boats leaving the port one by one and heading for the high seas to engage in fishing, while in the in the middle of its composition, at the foot of this cross which dominates a vast horizon, the wives and children of fishermen follow their husbands and fathers with their eyes for a long time, and implore God with ardent prayers to bless their nets and to grant them peace. happy and rich return. The fertile brush of Mr. Danvin allowed him to put before our eyes a large number of picturesque sites of our France »

Museums: Montpellier, Honfleur.