Antoine CALBET 1860+1944

Biography

Antoine Calbet is a French realist painter, engraver, illustrator, lithographer and decorator born in 1860.

Antoine Calbet is one of the major figures of academic realism of the Third Republic.

A flawless career It was at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Montpellier that Antoine Calbet forged an impeccable technique, in the studio of Édouard-Antoine Marsal (1845-1929). He then easily gained access to the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts in the prestigious studio of Alexandre Cabanel (1823-1889). He arrived on the Parisian art scene at a time when the Third Republic was seeking to establish its legitimacy through prestigious pictorial achievements. Noticed by President Fallières, with whom he became a friend, Antoine Calbet juggled official commissions and private requests.

An exemplary success Antoine Calbet exhibited regularly at the Salon, his first painting being accepted when he was just twenty years old. He won medals there in 1891, 1892 and 1893 and exhibited outside the competition in 1899.

For the 1900 World's Fair, he executed a panel for the Colonial Pavilion and received a silver medal.

He designed many prestigious decorations, the ceiling of the Théâtre Decourneau in Agen, wall decorations for the Town Halls of Pamiers, Agen, etc. In Paris, we admire in the restaurant of the Gare de Lyon, the Train Bleu, his evocations of Nice, Evian, Nîmes and Grenoble.

The painter of happiness.

Antoine Calbet's painting restores the positive atmosphere that marks the success of the Third Republic, which endures despite the horrors of the Great War. His subjects are light, euphoric, his women of exquisite beauty, his official portraits imposing. He excels in gallant scenes, the evocation of an idyllic past à la Watteau, or the exaltation of a grandiose nature.

Antoine Calbet died in 1942.

Antoine Calbet's works can be seen in French public collections, the Musée d'Orsay, the Musée du Petit Palais, as well as at the Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Agen, the Musée des Augustins in Toulouse, etc. not to mention town halls and theaters. In the USA, he is in the collections of the Dallas Museum of Art.

For more information:

- Clarisse Faurie, Antoine Calbet (1860-1942), vie et œuvre, Université de Toulouse, 2004.