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Felix Ziem
French, 1821 - 1911
French painter. He studied architecture at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Dijon until he was expelled in 1838 for unruly behaviour. In 1839 he left for Marseille, where he was Clerk of Works on the construction of the Marseille canal. In November 1839 he was noticed by Ferdinand Philippe, Duc d’Orléans, who accepted two watercolours that Ziem presented to him and commissioned a further six. This first success decided Ziem’s vocation, and he started a drawing class that was attended by Louis Auguste Laurent Aiguier (1819–65) and Adolphe Monticelli. During this period he also encountered the Provençal artists Emile Loubon (1809–63), Prosper Grésy (1804–74) and Gustave Ricard.
In 1842 Ziem left for Nice, where he came into contact with members of the European aristocracy, with whom, thanks to his talent and his charm, he was soon on familiar terms. During the following years he travelled widely. Sophie, the Grand Duchess of Baden, invited him to Baden in 1842. In 1843 he travelled with the Gagarin princes to Russia, where he stayed over a year. Between 1846 and 1848 he was in Italy, visiting Florence, Venice, Genoa, Naples and Rome. By 1849, when Ziem exhibited at the Salon for the first time, he was already making a comfortable living from his art; he exhibited there regularly until 1868. In 1854 he set off for North Africa and returned the following year to Tunisia. He divided his time between his Paris studio in the Rue Lepic, his travels and, after 1853, frequent visits to Barbizon, where he was an active member of the Barbizon school. His works enjoyed growing success and were much sought after by upper-class collectors. After 1876 he regularly spent the winters at Sainte-Hélène, his property in Nice, and went less frequently to Martigues, where he had built a studio in the Oriental style in 1861. Towards the end of his life he received many official honours, and his paintings were the first by a living artist to enter the Louvre in 1910. The contents of his studio are now housed in the Musée d’Art et d’Archéologie in Martigues.
Ziem was above all the painter of Venice: he visited the city more than 20 times. The commercial success of his views of Venice has often obscured their originality and the diversity of their compositions. Such works as Venice: The Bacino di S Marco with Fishing Boats (c. 1865; London, Wallace) are among his most beautiful achievements. He was also a prolific painter of Orientalist subjects, for example Fantasia at Constantinople (Paris, Petit Pal.). He painted some rare but magnificent canvases of Fontainebleau Forest in the style of the Barbizon school (e.g. Stag in the Forest of Fontainebleau; Paris, Petit Pal.). He was primarily a landscape painter, but he also worked on still-lifes and animal paintings. The vivacity and freshness of his palette, his nervous, vibrant touch, with passages of great virtuosity, his determination to seize fleeting effects of light and his ability to transcribe the iridescence of sunlight on water have often invoked comparisons with Impressionism. In fact the spirit of his work was fundamentally different. Ziem wanted to express the poetic quality of his subject, to transform it into an essentially dream-like vision, rather than to transcribe an immediate reality. He was also a fine draughtsman and left nearly 10,000 sheets, which attest to the variety of his interpretative gifts and the diversity of his technique.
Eric Hild-Ziem. "Ziem, Félix." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T093509 (accessed March 8, 2012).
Person TypeIndividual
French, 1824 - 1898
