Adolphe Joseph Thomas Monticelli

Adolphe Joseph Thomas Monticelli (14 October 1824 – 29 June 1886) was a French painter of the generation preceding the Impressionists.

Biography

Monticelli was born in Marseille in humble circumstances. He attended the École Municipale de Dessin in Marseille from 1842 to 1846 and continued his artistic training in Paris, where he studied under Paul Delaroche at the École des Beaux-Arts. In Paris, he made copies after the Old Masters in the Louvre and admired the oil sketches of Eugène Delacroix. In 1855 he met Narcisse Diaz, a member of the Barbizon school, and the two often painted together in the Fontainebleau Forest. Monticelli frequently adopted Diaz's practice of introducing nudes or elegantly costumed figures into his landscapes. His work reached its greatest spontaneity in the decade before his death in 1886.

Legacy

More than a century after his death, Monticelli's art is still subject to controversy.

In its painterly freedom, Monticelli's work prefigures that of Vincent van Gogh, who greatly admired his work after seeing it in Paris when he arrived there in 1886. Van Gogh immediately adopted a brighter palette and a bolder attack, and later remarked, "I sometimes think I am really continuing that man." In 1890, Van Gogh and his brother Theo were instrumental in publishing the first book about Monticelli.

A monument honouring Monticelli, designed in 1909 by the sculptor Auguste Carli, is installed in the Palais Longchamp, Marseille.

Exhibitions

From September 2008 until January 2009, an exhibition entitled "Van Gogh and Monticelli" took place in Marseille's Centre de la Vieille Charité, highlighting Monticelli's influence on Van Gogh's work.

From 25 April until 27 September 2015, an exhibition entitled "Van Gogh and Co. Criss-crossing the collection" at the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, The Netherlands, displayed paintings by Van Gogh and his predecessors, contemporaries and followers, among them François Bonvin, Charley Toorop, Henri Fantin-Latour, Jean-Baptiste Corot, Paul Cézanne, Bart van der Leck and Adolphe Monticelli.

Gallery