Hugues Merle
French painter (1822-1882)
Hugues Merle (1822-1881) was a French painter who mostly depicted sentimental or moral subjects. He has often been compared to William-Adolphe Bouguereau.
01Biography
Hugues Merle was born in 1822 in La Sône. He studied painting with Léon Cogniet. Merle started exhibiting at the Salon (Paris) in 1847. He received second class prizes in 1861 and 1863. In 1866 he was made Chevalier of the Legion of Honor.
Hugues Merle became a friend of Paul Durand-Ruel in the early 1860s. Durand-Ruel had started buying paintings by Merle in 1862 and introduced the artist to painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau. Merle was later often compared to Bouguereau and “became a considerable rival of Bouguereau in subject and treatment”. In the mid-1860s, Merle painted several portraits of Paul Durand-Ruel, his wife, and their son, John.
Hugues Merle died in 1881 in Paris. His son Georges Merle also became a painter.
02Influence
David Lynch and Mark Frost's Twin Peaks TV series character the Log Lady resembles Hugues Merle's painting The Lunatic of Étretat (1871).
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Hugues Merle”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Merle - Young Woman And Child.JPG by Hugues Merle, Public domain
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