Benjamin-Constant

de Nathalie Bondil, Samuel Montiège, Valerie Behiery

A leading Orientalist painter during the Third Republic in France, Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant was one of the great colourists of the period, and his work evokes the sights he had witnessed during his travels in Spain and Morocco, as well as reflecting the exotic contents of his studio. He was the creator of huge, architectural compositions, in which he set fierce-looking Moors and dispassionate odalisques. His history paintings, based on stories from the Bible and Byzantine history, were the culmination of his ventures into Orientalism, and his sparkling palette resulted in wonderfully chromatic and beautiful works. He also stands out as one of the era's great painters of decorative cycles, from his work in Paris at the Opera Comique and the Gare d'Orsay, to the Capitole in Toulouse. His reputation as a society portraitist, meanwhile, won him an international reputation among royalty and the aristocracy, particularly in England. Generously illustrated and written by an international team of specialists on late 19th-century French art, this is the first study to focus on this fascinating figure, offering new and unpublished research into the life of a famous yet today little-known artist and revealing him at work in his studio and at the Paris Salon, teaching at the Academie Julian and amidst the many foreign students and collectors who flocked round him.