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ROUSSEAU Philippe

Still life with Chinese porcelain

ROUSSEAU Philippe

(Paris, 1816 – Acquigny, 1887)

Still life with Chinese porcelain

Oil on canvas
Monogrammed and dated “1851” top right
21 x 15 cm



He was a student of Baron GROS and Edouard BERTIN. He debuted at the Salon of 1834, third class medal in 1845, second class in 1848, knight of the Legion of Honor in 1852, officer on June 20, 1870.

In the first part of his career, he mainly painted landscapes, notably in Normandy, refining his craft there. After these initial exercises, he mainly painted various still lifes in vividly camp scenes, whose chiaroscuro lighting, almost Caravaggesque, was astonishing in the 19th century. Success came to him from 1840. Subsequently, success and orders encouraged him to inflate his words. His still lifes, now more ambitious in their pastiche of the 17th century Dutch, lost a little of their initial freshness, which had initially placed him in the intimate lineage of CHARDIN. Having made these reservations, there remains nonetheless one of these “little masters” of the 19th century who revalorizes the reductive term.

Philippe ROUSSEAU enjoyed real success in his time with awards at the Salons, orders from the imperial court and Baron James de Rothschild, and the admiration of Baudelaire. Today particularly well represented in Dutch private and public collections, it can also be found in the following museums: Orsay, Metropolitan of New York, Munich, Lyon, Rouen, Compiègne, Lille…

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