Adélaïde Salles-Wagner (1824–1890) - Portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Rougé

Adélaïde SALLES-WAGNER
(Dresden, 1824 – Paris, 1890)

Portrait of Mr. Pierre Rougé
Portrait of Mrs. Mathilde Rougé, born Rauch

Pair of oils on canvas
Signed lower right for one and left for the other
130 x 95 cm each
1874

Adélaïde (Adelheid) Wagner, born on September 17, 1824, in Dresden, is therefore of Saxon origin. Her artistic training began in Dresden where she entered the Academy of Fine Arts with her little sister Élise to study portraiture. They then left Germany for Paris where Adélaïde entered the studio of Jules Coigniet. At the same time, and through Claudius Jacquand, whose studio Adélaïde attended for a time, Élise met the Lyon painter Simon Saint-Jean, with whom she took lessons in flower painting. The two sisters then decided to settle in Lyon, where Adélaïde met Louis Janmot, who accepted her into his studio. They also held a literary salon that was renowned in its time.
In 1865, Adélaïde married Jules Salles, a painter and curator of the Museum of Fine Arts of Nîmes and took the name Adélaïde Salles-Wagner. From 1866 onwards, she exhibited regularly at the Paris Salons, as well as those in Vienna and Munich, maintaining a lifelong connection with Germanic painting. She then had her first successes with portraits, in oil and pastel, then she produced a series of mythological and religious paintings, genre scenes… Adélaïde will also be present at the Salons of Amiens, Nîmes, Montpellier, Clermont and Caen.
Our artist died in Paris on July 2, 1890.

Museums: Brest, Castre, Sète, Reims, Narbonne, Toulon, Lyon, Grenoble, Le Puy-en-Velay, Roanne…

Adélaïde Salles-Wagner presents here the portraits of Monsieur Pierre Rougé, born on August 10, 1810 in Saint Cyr-sur-Loire and Madame Mathilde Rougé, born Rauch on May 12, 1839 in Tours. Pierre Rougé is known as a leather commissioner and lived in Lyon when he married on December 17, 1857 in Paris with Marie Germaine Mathilde Rauch. The pair of paintings was completed on August 10, 1874, for the owner's 64th birthday.