Fleury CHENU ( 1833 - 1875) - Bresse winter landscape

Augustin Pierre Bienvenu Chenu is a French painter known for his snowy landscapes and his place in 19th-century Lyonnais art history.

His family did not come from a very artistic background. He spent the first years of his childhood in Briançon, which inspired his many paintings of country and desert landscapes. His family moved to Lyon in 1846, where he entered the École des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, receiving drawing and painting lessons from Professor Louis Guy, as well as from Michel-Philibert Genod (1796-1862) and Claude Bonnefond.

His beginnings as a painter were difficult, and he painted the ceiling of the Lyon's casino to ease his financial difficulties. During this same period, he put his talent into practice, acquiring greater and greater mastery. He painted several canvases depicting hunting scenes, but always without violence or bright colors. His young talent drew the attention of the public and connoisseurs, notably with one of his canvases, "Le départ du bateau à vapeur", but his reputation remained limited to Lyon. From 1854 onwards, he took part in local Salons as an amateur.

He finally achieved national recognition at the 1867 Paris exhibition, where his painting "Le cours des Chartreux à Lyon" and also "Le Fiacre jaune" aroused great public interest. He won a medal in 1868. His fame was confirmed by a series of paintings ("Le maréchal ferrant", "La visite de noces", "Le coup de l'étrier", "Le quai de la charité à Lyon"), two of which were acquired by a minister and exhibited at the Musée du Luxembourg ("Le billet de logement" and "Les trainards"). In this way, he gained recognition among art lovers, enabling him to raise the price of his works and free himself from the financial constraints of his early days in Lyon. Some time later, at the age of 40, he died of heart disease, even though his works were finally enjoying great success in Paris and Lyon. He is buried in the Loyasse cemetery.

Augustin Chenu is best known for his paintings of hunting scenes, as well as paintings centered on nature without human presence, such as the famous "snow effects" (variations of paintings of countryside, wild paths and forests in snowy weather), which earned him the name of "snow painter". The severe winters of his childhood in Briançonnais left their mark on him, and this period is reflected in his almost meteorological work. Warm creamy white, off-white, soft washed-out white, nostalgic grayish white - these multiple shades of white give his paintings their style. He also created panels (paintings on wooden supports preceding the real canvases) in the staircase of the Hôtel de l'Europe, a private mansion in Lyon's second arrondissement, and in the Palais du Commerce, or Palais de la Bourse, in Lyon. Many of his paintings depict places in and around Lyon. He was strongly influenced by the works of Michel-Philibert Genod, but it is in his landscape paintings that he reveals his singularity, studying the effects of time and light at different times of day and at different times of the year. These series are reminiscent of Claude Monet's "Cathédrales de Rouen" series, painted at different times of day