Pascal-Adolphe-Jean Dagnan-Bouveret (January 7, 1852 – July 3, 1929), was one of the leading French artists of the academic

Academic art

Academic art is a style of painting and sculpture produced under the influence of European academies of art. Specifically, academic art is the art and artists influenced by the standards of the French Académie des Beaux-Arts, which practiced under the movements of Neoclassicism and Romanticism,...

 school. He was born in Paris, the son of a tailor, and was raised by his grandfather after his father emigrated to Brazil. Later he added his grandfather’s name, Bouveret, to his own.

From 1869, he studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts

École des Beaux-Arts

École des Beaux-Arts refers to a number of influential art schools in France. The most famous is the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, now located on the left bank in Paris, across the Seine from the Louvre, in the 6th arrondissement. The school has a history spanning more than 350 years,...

 under Alexandre Cabanel

Alexandre Cabanel

Alexandre Cabanel was a French painter.- Biography :Cabanel was born in Montpellier, Hérault. He painted historical, classical and religious subjects in the academic style. He was also well known as a portrait painter...

 and Jean-Léon Gérôme

Jean-Léon Gérôme

Jean-Léon Gérôme was a French painter and sculptor in the style now known as Academicism. The range of his oeuvre included historical painting, Greek mythology, Orientalism, portraits and other subjects, bringing the Academic painting tradition to an artistic climax.-Life:Jean-Léon Gérôme was born...

. In 1873, he opened his own studio with a fellow student Gustave-Claude-Etienne Courtois

Gustave-Claude-Etienne Courtois

Gustave-Claude-Etienne Courtois was a French painter, a representative of the academic style of art.-Life:Courtois was born to an unwed mother who was devoted to him...

. From 1875, he exhibited at the Salon, where in 1880 he won the first-class medal for the painting An Accident, and a medal of honour in 1885 for Horses at the Watering Trough.

From the 1880s, Dagnan-Bouveret along with Gustave Courtois, maintained a studio in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a fashionable suburb of Paris. By that time he was recognized as a leading modern artist known for his peasant scenes, but also for his mystical-religious compositions. His large-scale painting The Last Supper was exhibited at the Salon de Champ-de-Mars in 1896. He also painted portraits for wealthy clients including the British collector George McCulloch

George McCulloch (mine owner)

George McCulloch was the mastermind behind the formation of the Broken Hill Mining Company, a precursor of BHP Billiton.George's father died when he was one year old...

. He was one of the first to use the then new medium of photography to bring greater realism to his paintings.

In 1891, he was made an Officer of the Legion of Honour; in 1900 he became a member of the Institut de France.

Literature

• Gabriel P.Weisberg. Against the Modern: Dagnan-Bouveret and the Transformation of the Academic Tradition. New York: Dahesh Museum of Art, 2002. ISBN 081353156X