Louis Auguste LOUSTAUNAU (1846 – 1898)

Louis Loustaunau depicts a view of the gardens of Versailles. It represents a nature tamed by the century of Louis XIV, and takes architecture as its subject. The foreground offers a path on which the viewer is about to embark, in the distance, the architecture takes shape. The morning sun magnifies the white stone and the lines of the royal apartments.

The play of shadow and light serves the perspective and the skilful composition. The painter invites the viewer to reflect on the morning walk.

The young painter was trained at the School of Fine Arts in Paris. He joined the workshops of Jean-Léon Gérôme and Eugène Barrias. He stood out for his talents as a landscape painter. He began at the 1869 Salon, exhibiting a view of Brittany. He exhibited regularly at the Salons until 1875, sent landscapes and genre scenes.

He completed his training with Edouard Detaille. The latter opened him up to military and historical painting. Loustaunau paints “Rider in the park of Versailles”, whose landscape in which the riders fit is inspired by this painting.

Louis Loustaunau gradually detaches himself from the noble genre to rediscover his childhood loves; the painting of anecdote and domesticated nature. France reaches a period of relative peace, its painting is humanized. The painter returned to landscape and genre painting and practiced their execution with finesse.

Museums:
• In Versailles: Lambinet Museum, National Museum of the Palaces of Versailles and the Trianon, barracks of the 5th Engineers.

• In Paris: Gallery Ary Jan. Municipal Museum of Pontarlier, Museum of Fine Arts of Rennes. Private collections.

Bibliography:
. “Notice of old and modern paintings, watercolours, pastels and drawings, old engravings, old and modern books, earthenware, bronzes”, Paris, ed. Went out, 1894
. Émile Bellier de La Chavignerie, Louis Auvray, “General dictionary of artists of the French School from the origin of the arts of drawing to the present day: architects, painters, sculptors, engravers and lithographers, 1882–1885”, book, Volume II and Volume III, Paris, ed. nr, 1885.