Antoine Félix BOISSELIER (1790-1857) - The ruins of the Château du Vivier

Antoine Félix BOISSELIER
(Paris, 1790 - Versailles, 1857)

View of the ruins of the Château du Vivier-en-Brie

Oil on canvas
Signed lower left
Dated and located on the stretcher
27 x 41 cm
1834

Antoine-Félix, nicknamed Boisselier le Jeune, was first trained by his brother Félix (Damphal, 1776 - Rome, 1811), a pupil of Regnault rather specialized in the historical genre and who won in a row the Grand Prix de Rome in painting in 1805 and 1806; this older brother had a tragic fate since he committed suicide by drowning in the Tiber in January 1811.
After a trip to Italy in the years 1811/1812 - probably in the first place to attend to the funeral of his brother, Boisselier the young returned to France and enrolled in 1817 at 26 at the Beaux-Arts in Paris, in the workshop of the master of the neo-classical landscape Jean-Victor Bertin. With his talent, his already great experience, and the advice of his master, he was awarded 2nd at the Prix de Rome for the newly created historic landscape, of which Valenciennes was the initiator. On the theme of Democritus and the Abdéritains, he is preceded by the untouchable Michallon, another pupil of Bertin.
From then on, Boisselier exhibited regularly at the Salon until 1853, not disdaining provincial exhibitions (Douai, Cambrai - of which he is a member of the Academy, ...). He obtained numerous awards, such as a 2nd class medal in 1824. National consecration, he was decorated with the Legion of Honor in 1842.
He did educational work by being a drawing teacher at the military school of Saint-Cyr from 1830, and by having his own workshop in which he would train, for example, Charles-Émile Lambinet or Édouard-Charles de Beaumont.
Boisselier regularly exhibits views of Italy until the end of his career, but the French regions also retain his attention: Auvergne, Dauphiné, Dordogne, and especially Provence and the Paris basin (views of Pierrefonds, Fontainebleau, Les Andelys, Épône, Les Vaux de Cernay and of course our painting ...).
Apart from the pure landscape, he painted several historical scenes in the 1820s and 1830s, and more rarely, religious paintings for Saint-Sulpice in 1827.

Located today in the commune of Fontenay-Trésigny in the department of Seine-et-Marne, the Palais du Vivier, installed on the banks of the Bréon tributary of the Yerres, was originally integrated into the royal domain under Philippe IV le Bel.
Philippe V le Long signed the ordinances on the organization of the Court of Auditors and the Parliament of Paris in 1320 at Le Vivier, a name from the nearby fishpond. Then the kings succeed one another, Charles V enlarged it and installed a chapel dedicated to Saint Louis there. The castle served in 1352 as a sumptuous setting for the marriage of Jeanne of France, daughter of King John II the Good, with the king of Navarre Charles the Bad. The chapel was then raised to the rank of collegiate church for the occasion. In the 1390s, Charles VI was confined to the Vivier following his fits of madness. It is moreover for the latter's distraction that the tarot deck, as we know it today, was developed at Le Vivier by his personal doctor in order to calm his moods. Afterwards the castle will be abandoned, although we continue to serve carp from the Vivier at the Louvre table. François I will be the last to sleep there - among the neighboring monks, the castle being in a state of disrepair, and Louis XIV the last to spend there in 1694.
Le Vivier was used as a stone quarry during the revolution before being saved by Parisian lawyer Maître Jean-Baptiste-Nicolas Parquin, who saved the place by restoring ruins, ponds and gardens.
The estate has since passed from private to private hands and is today classified as a historic monument.