1829-1905 French Jean Jacques Henner Galleries French painter. He was born into a peasant family in the Sundgau and received his first artistic training at Altkirch with Charles Goutzwiller (1810-1900) and later in Strasbourg in the studio of Gabriel-Christophe Gu?rin (1790-1846). In 1846 he enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris as a pupil of Michel-Martin Drolling and, from 1851, of Francois-Edouard Picot. While a student he was particularly drawn to portraiture, and during his frequent visits to Alsace he made portraits of his family as well as of the notables of the region. He also painted scenes of Alsatian peasant life.
Pierre Corneille
1778 Terracotta, height 156 cm Musee du Louvre, Paris Eighteenth-century sculptors tended to portray scientists and men of letters rather than soldiers, as regards the famous men of the past. The vogue for retrospective portraits flourished and would continue to do so for a long time. Caffieri was particularly proficient at this genre, as seen by his wonderfully lifelike statue of Pierre Corneille. He captures the dramatist searching for an appropriate rhyme or twist in plot, a goose quill in his hand and a number of folios lying scattered at his feet. The sculptor is careful to avoid any anachronism and depicts him accurately in seventeenth-century dress, thus anticipating the historicism of the nineteenth-century artists. The composition reveals a remarkably harmonious sense of balance and it has an undeniable vivacity. Artist: CAFFIeRI, Jean-Jacques Title: Pierre Corneille Date: 1751-1800 French , sculpture : portrait