The arrival of the storm - Joseph FAVEROT (1862-1918)

FAVEROT Joseph (1862-1918

French painter, originally from Montmartre, of clowns, genre scenes and animal scenes.
He worked in Gérome's studio. He was exhibited in Paris at the Salon des Artistes Français from 1887 to 1900, and specialized in animal paintings, particularly of roosters. Faverot is also widely known as the painter of clowns, and produces large genre scenes such as our canvas.

Faverot was a former circus clown with a very pronounced and confident taste for drawing.

We owe him genre scenes (acrobatics, dressage) and portraits of famous clowns (Bottom, Boum Boum, Marcilly) performing at the Circus Fernando, then the Circus Medrano.
He also created frescoes for cabarets such as Le Rat mort at 7 place Pigalle, and for Ernest Lemaire's guinguette in 1887.
He also collaborated with a number of newspapers, such as Le Courrier français, in which he introduced the clown figure that has become his signature.

Our painting fascinates with its almost cinematic setting, like a silent film about to come to life before our very eyes.

The scene is set in Veules les roses, Normandy, an hour from Le Tréport, and dates from 1882.

Normandy was a tourist mecca at the time, frequented by the upper middle classes. People were beginning to discover the pleasures of the sea: swimming, strolling, showing off, chatting, spying on others with a discreet glance...

The artist perfectly captures this atmosphere, while adding a touch of burlesque, as he does best.
The bathers, swept along by the oncoming storm, almost look like clowns. Faced with a beach lifeguard who's right in his boots.
The artist brilliantly orchestrates the characters in his painting as if in a circus, creating what we call "comiques de situation".