Eugène Lepoittevin (31 July 1806 – 6 August 1870), also known as Poidevin, Poitevin, and Le Poittevin, was a French artist who achieved an early and lifelong success as a landscape and maritime painter. His work ranged from erotic caricatures to massive battle scenes. His works are in the collections of many museums throughout France. He made many paintings set in and around the fishing village of Étretat, and in 2020 he was the subject of an exhibition and book, L'invention d'Étretat: Eugène Le Poittevin, un peintre et ses amis à l'aube de l'impressionnisme (The invention of Étretat: Eugène Le Poittevin, a painter and his friends at the dawn of Impressionism).
Family and personal life Eugène Lepoittevin was born as Eugène Modeste Edmond Poidevin on 31 July 1806 in Paris. He was the son of Nicolas Potdevin of Rouen in Normandy, who moved to Paris and became chief cabinetmaker at the Palace of Versailles. Over time, Nicholas Potdevin changed the family name to Poidevin, Poitevin and then Lepoittevin.Sébille (2020a), pp. 31-33.
Lepoittevin married Stéphanie Anastasie Maillard (born 1825) in 1844 or 1845. They had two daughters, Eugènie Adélaïde Fanny (born 1846) and Marie Eugènie (born 1847). Stéphanie died in 1851. In 1861, Lepoittevin married Marie Adélaïde Françoise Pironin (born ). He died 6 August 1870 at the house of his first daughter Eugènie and her husband, the tenor Léon Achard, in , which is today the 16th arrondissement of Paris.Sébille (2020a), pp. 37-42.
He was not, as is sometimes stated, a relative of Guy de Maupassant, who was a first cousin and close friend of another painter, (1847–1909).Sébille (2020a), p. 29Artinian, Artine. "Guy de Maupassant and Louis Le Poittevin", Modern Language Notes, Vol. 63, No. 7 (Nov., 1948), pp. 463-469. However, Lepoittevin and the much younger Guy de Maupassant were friends, and Maupassant as a young man (not yet famous) is thought to appear in Lepoittevin's paintings of the beach crowd at Étretat.Delarue (2005), pp. 62-69. Under the nom de plume Maufrigneuse, Maupassant would later relate some anecdotes about Lepoittevin in the pages of the periodical Gil Blas.See the stories with the Maufrigneuse byline in the 21 June 1882 and 30 August 1882 issues of Gil Blas.
A younger contemporary described Lepoittevin as physically small and slender, temperamentally kind, alert and cheerful, silly or serious depending on the hour.Bellangé (1872), p. 6: "…gentil, petit, fluet, alerte et gai, volage et sérieux suivant l'heure." Biographer Nadège Sébille describes him as a man who loved jokes and exuded an infectious joie de vivre.Sébille (2020c), p. 93: "Effectivement, le peintre aime les blagues et les histoires et anecdotes que l'on peut lire à son suject laissent transparaître une joie de vivre contagieuse."
Career In 1826, at the age of 20, Eugène was enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts. He studied painting under Louis Hersent and Auguste Xavier Leprince. His stature in the atelier of Leprince and his ability to match the skill of the master were such that when Leprince died, Lepoittevin was commissioned to complete Leprince's unfinished Interieur de l'atelier de feu Leprince (The Artist's Studio), exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1827;Explication des ouvrages de peinture et dessins, sculpture, architecture et gravure des artistes vivans exposé au Musée Royal des Arts le 4 Novembre 1827, Paris: Ballard, 1827, pp. 107-108: "Des trente figures-portraits que comporte la composition des scènes, dix-neuf avaient été terminées par M. Xavier Leprince, enlevé à ses travaux par une mort prématurée, les onze autres et divers accessoires sont de la main de M. Eugène Potdevin." ("Of the thirty figure-portraits included in the composition, nineteen had been completed by Mr. Xavier Leprince before his premature death; the eleven others and various details are by the hand of Mr. Eugène Potdevin.") biographer Nadège Sébille presumes the seated figure at far left is a self-portrait of the young Lepoittevin.Sébille (2020a), p 33: "Sûrement d'ailleurs s'est-il représenté peignant assis, à la gauche du tableau". Also in 1827, at the age of 21, Lepoittevin debuted at the Paris Salon, under the name Potdevin.Explication des ouvrages de peinture et dessins, sculpture, architecture et gravure des artistes vivans exposé au Musée Royal des Arts le 4 Novembre 1827, Paris: Ballard, 1827, p. 127. Up to and including the year of his death in 1870, he would exhibit over 150 paintings at the annual Salon.
In the 1830s, Lepoittevin became a prolific lithographer and caricaturist, with work appearing in the popular periodical La Caricature. Following the July Revolution of 1830, Lepoittevin published the ironically titled Souvenir patriotiques, a series of sardonic lithographs depicting scenes from the revolution in Paris. At about this time he also published Ombres Fantastiques, an album of twelve plates, each teeming with silhouettes that evoked, even as they subverted and satirized, the figures in the so-called Chinese shadows plays (ombres chinoises) popularized in France in the previous century by Dominique Séraphin; among the provocative silhouettes could be discerned a great many mischievous (and often flatulent) devils.
Lepoittevin's devils took center-stage in several albums of erotic lithographs depicting these imps and their hapless human partners; Lepoittevin's outlandish diableries became a sensation, inspiring imitators who spawned a whole genre of such works. At least two of Lepoittevin's diabolical albums were banned in France, including Charges et décharges diaboliques, which in 1845 was censored and then condemned to destruction as an outrage to public morals and good manners.Fernand Drujon, Catalogue des ouvrages, écrits et dessins de toute nature poursuivis, supprimés ou condamnés depuis le 21 octobre 1814 jusqu'au 31 juillet 1877…, édition nouvelle augmentée, Paris: Librairie Ancienne et Moderne Édouard Rouveyre, 1879, pp. 88-89. As recently as 1951, the album was seized by U.S. Customs because "the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to prurient interest."
The Bibliothèque Nationale de France includes in its collection Diableries, an album of 20 of the artist's erotic lithographs, which is freely accessible online.Lepoittevin, Eugène. Diableries, Paris, 1832-1834.
Beginning in 1834, while still in his twenties, Lepoittevin was commissioned by the State to paint official works for the historical museum at Versailles. These included military scenes (the Battle of Wertingen, 1805; the naval combat off the island of Embro, 1346; the siege of Beirut, 1109) and the more placid Lunch Offered to Queen Victoria in a Tent at Mont d'Orléans in the forest of Eu, 4 September 1843.
Lepoittevin drew inspiration from travels to many sites in France, as well as to England, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and Algeria.
He became especially known for his maritime subjects, ranging from naval battles and shipwrecks to scenes of fisherman at work and swimmers relaxing at the beach. He was particularly fond of the fishing village of Étretat in Normandy, where in 1851 he built a chalet called La Chaufferette, about a hundred meters from the house where Guy de Maupassant spent his childhood. In the garden, Lepoittevin installed a fishing boat converted to a cabin where Maupassant liked to sleep. Lepoittevin also built a workshop by the sea, a two-story house with a large French window opening on the second-floor studio. According to Maupassant, it was in this atelier that Courbet would create his La Vague (The Wave) series of paintings. The flint structure weathered many storms until it was destroyed by the Nazis to clear the waterfront.Guy de Maupassant, "La Vie d'un Paysagiste", Gil Blas, 28 Sept. 1886, p. 1.
A glimpse of his social life in Étretat, and his sense of humor, is provided by a lengthy anecdote recounted by the anonymous Paris Diarist for Dwight's Journal of Music, about a house-warming potluck hosted by Lepoittevin at La Chaufferette in 1851. Each guest was to "furnish his or her own candle" and to bring one dish. The fish dish was to be provided by the host, to the relief of the rest because "in fishing ports, it is hardly possible to get fish; we can only enjoy the odor. The fishermen are hardly ashore before their booty is on its way to Paris. But our painter had made himself the friend, sponsor, crony, counsellor, and benevolent giver of old clothes to all the fishermen in the place, and could therefore be sure of obtaining the desired fish." When the dish was presented, the guests applauded to see such a huge specimen, with "all the colors of the rainbow, and a multitude of others…resplendent upon its scales." But when one of the guests cut a piece, "the slice, slipping from the knife, fell upon the table and flew into a thousand pieces! Then and not till then, we discovered that the famous fish was of clay, which the skillful Lepoittevin, unable to obtain the real thing, had modeled and painted with perfection sufficient to deceive anybody."Dwight's Journal of Music, Boston, Feb. 2, 1861, p. 355.
Lepoittevin also painted a historical series depicting marine artists and others who inspired his own painting. These artists are usually shown at work in the "studio" of the open air. These included Adriaen van de Velde Disembarking on Blanckenberg Beach, 1840; Paul Potter Drawing from Life in the Hague (aka Paul Potter Painting The Young Bull), 1843; Van de Velde, Who Usually Followed His Friend Ruyter in the Maritime Campaigns, Draws a Naval Combat from Nature, 1843; Van Dyck Receives a Drawing Lesson from his Mother, ; Van de Velde Studying the Effect of the Cannon his Friend Ruyter Fired for this Purpose, 1845; Bakhuizen Telling Stories of Piracy by Fishermen from Schweningen, 1845; Young Bakhuizen Contemplating the Effects of the Storm, 1847; Bakhuizen Offering his Purse to Sailors to Take Him on in Bad Weather, 1848; David Teniers the Younger leading Don Juan of Austria, His Pupil, to a Fair, 1848;Van de Velde Embarks to Go after Admiral Ruyter, his Friend, upon His Arrival in Rotterdam, 1850; Bakhuizen Drawing from Nature in the Dunes of Skeveningen, 1850; and The Painter, Scene from the Life of Adriaen Brouwer, .
In 1843, he was made a knight of the Legion of Honor.Villot, F. (1858). Notice des peintures, sculptures et dessins de l'École moderne de France: exposés dans les galeries du Musée impérial du Luxembourg, 3. éd., Paris: C. de Mourgues, p. 23. In 1845, he was made a Knight of the Order of Leopold. In 1849, he was appointed Peintre de la Marine for the French Ministry of Defence.
Lepoittevin was active in the artistic life of Paris. He was among 28 artists, including Corot, Delacroix, and Rousseau, who petitioned for the construction of a gallery specifically to exhibit French art at the 1851 Great Exhibition in London; the project was not successful.Mainardi, Patricia (1986). "The Unbuilt Picture Gallery at the 1851 Great Exhibition", Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 45, No. 3 (Sept., 1986), pp. 294-299. In 1860, Lepoittevin was a founding member of the fashionable and influential club of Parisian artists, writers, architects, and musicians, Le Cercle de L’Union Artistique.Yriarte, Charles (1864). Les Cercles de Paris 1828-1864, Paris: D. de la Mahérie, pp. 233-236.
Two years after his death, the contents of his studio were sold at auction; these included 144 paintings and finished sketches and 52 drawings and watercolors by Leppoittevin, 20 paintings by friends, as well as his paints and painting utensils, and altogether realized around 40,000 francs.Sébille, Nadège (2020a), pp. 42-43."Les On-Dit", Le Rappel, 14 April 1872, p. 2.
In museums