Théodule Ribot (1823–1891) - Portrait of the artist's mother

Augustin Théodule RIBOT
(Saint-Nicolas-d’Attez, 1823 – Colombes, 1891)

Portrait of the artist's mother

Oil on canvas
Signed lower left
33.5 x 26 cm

It was in 1823, on August 5, in Saint-Nicolas-d’Attez, very close to Breteuil in Eure, that Augustin Théodule Ribot was born. His father, Michel-Nicolas Ribot, surveyor and tax collector, occupied a former ecclesiastical outbuilding, and it was in the shadow of the old church of Saint-Nicolas that the child grew up. Taught by his father, he did not attend school and in this free education, given in the open air, the young Ribot perhaps drew those first feelings of independence that he was to display later. Predestined by his father to the School of Arts and Crafts in Châlons, the son during recess liked to smear the appearance of figures and landscapes with the colors that his father used for the work of his profession. The latter undoubtedly used his son's abilities and Théodule Ribot must, around fifteen or sixteen years old, take an active part in the washes requested from his surveyor father. The town of Évreux has several signed “Ribot, 1839-1840” and it is not rash to think that it holds, under the father’s signature, the son’s first “colored” works.
An unforeseen misfortune came to disrupt the family's entire existence. Mr. Ribot died; the liquidation of the estate was laborious and left all his family destitute. The young Théodule Ribot, who remained the only support for his mother and his sisters (there were five or six of them), had to look for some kind of work to ensure their material existence. Familiar with figures, he found, through connections, a job as an accountant with a draper in Elbeuf. He stayed there for four years then left to seek his fortune in Paris. He then tried his hand at all tasks without reluctance and in the evening, after the tiring and vulgar work of the day, Ribot, returning to art, drew and painted most often by the light of the lamp; and it is from this period, to the execution of these painted or drawn studies made in these very special light conditions, that his habit of violent oppositions of white and black is undoubtedly due.
Little by little, Ribot brought his profession closer to his passion and ended up entering the workshop of Glaize, who charged him, from the start, with painting the architectural backgrounds of his paintings. Consecration came for him in 1861 when six of his paintings were admitted to the Paris Salon and pleasantly received. Thus Ribot, a self-taught painter, liberated and solitary, was nonetheless at the heart of the artistic scene of his time, most of which he shared in the Salons and provincial exhibitions. Many artists, including Boudin, Roll, Fantin-Latour, Gervex, Monet and Raffaëlli, were, during the artist's lifetime, sensitive to his painting, marked by an eminently singular form of realism. The taste for popular traditions, the attention paid to ordinary people, the austere simplicity of the objects and places represented, the choice of a tenebrist painting with powerful chiaroscuro, are some of the characteristics of his painting. The artist also shares with some of his contemporaries the refusal to dramatize, a very characteristic form of reserve, of restraint, which draws a remarkable point of agreement between his work and his life, both equally discreet.
In 1871, Ribot moved to the Paris region and set up his workshop in Colombes where he would end his work and his days.
Recognized by all, he was named knight of the Legion of Honor in 1878 and promoted to officer in 1887. He died on September 11, 1891 in his house in Colombes.

Ribot, as usual, gives us here an intimate portrait of his mother, who was in his early days, like his wife and son, one of his very first models due to lack of financial means.

Museums: Buenos Aires, Bilbao, New York, Cleveland, Amiens, Besançon, Bordeaux, Caen, Courbevoie, Lille, Lyon, Marseille, Paris (Mus. d’Orsay, Petit Palais) Reims, Roubaix; Rouen, Toulouse, Troyes, Budapest, Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum), Glasgow, Oxford (Ashmolean Mus.)…