Auguste Adolphe Chauvin (24 October 1810 – 29 May 1884) was a Belgian painter and draughtsman. He produced religious scenes, portraits, historical and allegorical compositions, and genre scenes. In his historical works he was close to the Romantic movement, while his religious painting was strongly influenced by the Düsseldorf school.
Born in Liège, Chauvin moved with his family to Aachen in 1816. He trained initially as an architect while learning the basics of drawing and painting from . After working as a master mason for several years, he abandoned that career in 1831 to study at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf under Wilhelm von Schadow. From 1832 to 1841 he continued his training in Düsseldorf while spending several months each year as court painter to the prince of Neuwied.
In 1841 Chauvin returned to Liège, where he was offered a teaching post at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. He became its director in 1856 and also was director of the city's painting collections. He retired in 1880. Throughout his career he worked to promote German art, particularly the Düsseldorf masters, in Belgium.
Biography
Early life and training (1810–1841)
Auguste Adolphe Chauvin was born on 24 October 1810 in Liège, then part of the French Empire. He was the eldest son of Pierre Jean Jacques Chauvin, a hat merchant, and Antoinette Piermont. The couple had several other children, including François Chauvin (born 1812), who became an officer in the German army and was ennobled after the wars of 1866 and 1870.
In 1816 the family moved to Aachen, where Auguste attended primary school, secondary school, and finally industrial school. He was soon attached to the latter institution as a substitute teacher. Around this time he began studying the principles of drawing and painting alongside Alfred Rethel under .
He trained as an architect and for four or five years worked as a Maurermeister (master mason). The work did not suit him, and in 1831 he decided to go to Düsseldorf to study at the Academy of Fine Arts under Wilhelm von Schadow. According to an 1865 article in La Meuse, "Schadow pulled a rather doubtful face when he heard the plans laid out by this young man of twenty-one; and he forcefully objected to the difficulties of his undertaking; nevertheless, yielding to this firm and unshakeable will, he allowed him to make a trial."
Chauvin continued his training at the Düsseldorf Academy, but was obliged each year to leave the city for several months to go to Neuwied. From 1832 to 1841 he worked there as drawing master to Prince Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied and later as official court painter. There, "he later told his pupils, he painted in white gloves".
Chauvin began his artistic career in 1836 with the canvas Farewell between Tobias and His Blind Father. In 1840 he exhibited two paintings at the Antwerp Salon, including The Châtelaine; Episode of the Falcon Hunt. "This work was so successful that soon other artists seized on the subject and reproduced it with different variations."
During his years in Düsseldorf, Chauvin formed friendships with Alfred Rethel and Christian Köhler. He also organised a trip to Belgium, serving as guide for Schadow, Köhler, and fourteen other painters of the Düsseldorf school. "This was the first important artistic journey, which created relations between Belgian and German artists, even though the latter felt themselves more drawn to the works of the old masters of Ghent, Antwerp and Bruges." He married Marie Wilhelmine Buschbeck (1819–1890), a native of Koblenz, with whom he had five sons, including the University of Liège professor and orientalist Victor Chauvin (1844–1913).
Career at the Liège Academy (1841–1880)
In 1841 Chauvin returned to Liège, where he was appointed professor of drawing at the Academy of Fine Arts. This began a teaching career that extended from 1842 to 1880. In 1855 he was appointed director of the Academy following the death of , and held both posts from 1856 to 1880. As professor and director he brought "an elevated spirit, a sound judgment, a sure taste, and great benevolence towards his pupils and subordinates". He was also credited with "the necessary tact to direct each person in his path" and the ability to "encourage talent appropriately and give it the opportunity to emerge".
In addition to his Academy career, Chauvin served on the governing committee of the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts from 1846 to 1857, the Provincial Monuments Commission, and the Commission for the Improvement of Drawing Instruction. In 1856 he was also named director of the city of Liège's painting collections, then housed in the Halle aux Drapiers, a position he likewise held until 1880.
Despite his multiple teaching and administrative duties, Chauvin exhibited regularly. At the 1845 Brussels Salon he showed The Death of Moses. In 1848 he sent five works to the Brussels Salon, including A Last Meeting between the Mayors Beeckman and Laruelle, which earned him a vermeil medal, his Flight into Egypt which "was so successful and was reproduced by engraving", and his Portrait of Father Henri Lacordaire. Critics were guarded, however, finding in the artist "unquestionable qualities, compressed by an excess of wisdom, of prudence" and urging him "to be bolder; let him not fear to show too much audacity". At the 1851 Brussels Salon, Chauvin exhibited the Portrait of Baron , held at the Senate. The same year he took part in the annual exhibition of the Royal Academy of Arts in London, sending three canvases including The Flight into Egypt.
Chauvin's next exhibition was not until ten years later, when he showed The Banquet of Jupille at the 1861 Antwerp Salon. The absence of notable exhibitions during this period was probably linked to his increased workload at the Academy following the death of in 1855. In 1855–56 he had been named director of the Academy (initially in an acting capacity until 1858, then permanently) and of the municipal art collections, while also serving as professor of drawing "from nature", painting, and historical composition (advanced teaching). He also continued to teach the intermediate courses in drawing "from the antique" and expression, which he had handled since 1842, until he was finally replaced in September 1859 by Charles Soubre.
Chauvin's return to exhibiting was well received by contemporary critics, and he was made a Knight of the Order of Leopold at the close of the Salon. The Banquet of Jupille met with "such legitimate success" at the Antwerp Salon that the following year "the Senate of Berlin sent the artist a most flattering letter inviting him to exhibit" the painting in the Prussian capital, where it was also well received by the critics.
In the years that followed, Chauvin exhibited more regularly: at the London International Exhibition in 1862; at the Antwerp Salon in 1864, 1870, and 1873; at the Ghent Salon in 1871 and 1874; and finally at the 1875 Brussels Salon. Most of the works he sent were religious paintings, such as The Remorse of Cain, The Arrival of the Holy Family in Egypt, and The Education of the Virgin Mary. Nevertheless, Chauvin's artistic output had slowed—a point the periodical lamented in an article of 6 April 1873:
For some time, however, the artist seems to have been absorbed by the director of the Academy; the colours are drying on his palette and his brush seems neglected. Has the sacred fire gone out and does the artist think to rest on his successes?
In 1930 the art critic and museum curator described Chauvin as an "erudite and much listened-to man [who] enjoyed great prestige in Liège", a judgement already conveyed by an 1865 article in La Meuse: "His talent, his wit, his knowledge, and his activity have earned him the esteem of his fellow citizens and the confidence of the government, which often calls him to serve on commissions or charges him with missions abroad." In 1863 he was sent to Stuttgart and Munich "to report on the exhibition of graphic works from the Bavarian schools". Throughout his career he "strove to make German art, and more particularly the works of the Düsseldorf masters, known and appreciated in Belgium".
From the German side, the artist and critic , quoted by Johannes Fey in 1897, considered that Chauvin "combines in the most agreeable manner German conviviality with French liveliness and lightness". The "German conviviality" was found especially in Chauvin's family life, while the "French liveliness and lightness" manifested more in his public activity.
Final years (1880–1884)
In 1880 Chauvin retired, his departure announced in June and made official in October, "after long and loyal service". He was also named honorary director. Even in retirement, he sent Moses on Mount Sinai to the 1880 Ghent Salon and presented three canvases at the in Brussels. The same year he wrote a study of Liège painters since 1830 (published in 1881), noting that an album presented to the German Empress Augusta of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach contained a drawing by his hand; and produced portraits of Joseph Lebeau (a government commission) and of Hippolyte Cornet, former mayor of Chênée.
Auguste Chauvin died in Liège on 29 May 1884 from an illness that had struck him shortly before, as recalled at the funeral: "Scarcely a month ago he took to his bed, never to rise again, and yesterday, still alive in spirit, he passed away without suffering." The funeral drew "a considerable crowd", including numerous "Liège notables" as well as "the teaching staff and the students of the Academy in full force". He was buried in Robermont Cemetery.
Work
Style and technique
The art historian identifies in Auguste Chauvin a "predilection for portraits, historical and allegorical compositions, and genre scenes" and places him as "close to Romanticism". Serge , a doctor of archaeology and art history, summarises: "Auguste Chauvin—his heroic canvases prolong nationalist Romanticism… into the last quarter of the century!" In the volume Un double regard sur 2000 ans d'art wallon, the same author briefly traces Chauvin's career at the Liège academy, where he "led a brilliant career marked by his historical and religious compositions, bearing the influence of his years of training in Aachen and Düsseldorf".
This closeness to Romanticism, especially in his historical compositions, is also highlighted by Jacques Goijen and by Sibylle Valcke and Gaëtane Warzée. The same authors also agree that the style of his biblical canvases is strongly influenced by the Düsseldorf school and recognise the quality of his portraits of prominent bourgeois figures and celebrities. The art historian and museum curator Jacques Hendrick considers that "his portraits, his small-format paintings, defend his memory better and are superior to his large compositions".
Liliane Sabatini, curator of the Museum of Walloon Art, drawing on a remark by the artist and art historian , notes: "Painters of religious subjects, influenced by the Nazarenes who led a quasi-monastic life in a disused convent in Rome—Auguste Chauvin, , and —tried indeed to recover through science and reflection the faith and genius of bygone eras. They thus created conscientious works weighed down by the need to signify." The influence of the Romantic and Nazarene movements on Chauvin is also underlined by the art historian Séverine Livin in the catalogue published in 2001 for the exhibition Towards Modernity: the 19th Century in the Country of Liège.
As an 1865 article in La Meuse put it, Auguste Chauvin was one of the few Belgian artists who found in German art "the language through which they can properly express themselves, and which even becomes their true mother tongue."
Portrait of Father Henri Lacordaire (1848)