HONFLEUR SOUVENIRS ET REVERIES

 

Charles MOZIN

1806-1862

 

The slope of modernity in the landscape painting

 

 " /... there will be a small quarrel about anteriority; concerning who will assert to have been the first to discover Trouville. Alexandre Dumas acknowledges with a certain nuance of regret that three artists knew Trouville before he came himself to stay there in 1831 and « confessed that he was not the inventor »... and to quote Huet, A. G. Decamps (1803-1860), G. Jadin (1805-1882). To these names, he should have added those of Eugene Isabey and Mozin; he also forgets Corot, who the Museum of Orsay Trouville bateaux de pêche échoués dans le chenal / sailboats stranded, circa 1830 provides us at least a proof that he preceded Dumas on the spot. .../.

 

Even if it is proven that Eugene Isabey and Paul Huet have been active on the edges of the river Touques since 1827 and 1828, the discoverer remains Charles Mozin. He is the inventor, the initiator, the « father founder » as one could say, if this denomination could be appropriate to such a young man. Because this Master is a young Master when he is interested in Trouville for the first time. He was born in 1806; when he discovers Trouville, he is just 19 years old. Like Isabey, he has worked in the studio of Xavier Leprince but for only one year. In 1826, like Eugene Isabey, he has already sold his first painting to the duchess of Berry. Twenty years afterwards, Baudelaire evokes the duchess in his chronicles for the Salon of 1845 when he mentions: « These lithographs which the merchants buy three sols and sell a franc are the faithful representatives of this elegant and perfumed life of the Restauration period over which, like a protective angel, the romantic and fair ghost of the duchess of Berry floats. » ./....

 

A considerable part of the work of Charles Mozin, in this period of Restauration, is still turned towards the XVIII th century and the traditional age. It is particularly sensitive in works such as « Marsh of Deauville with the river Touques » and « The quay » or « Entry of the river Touques ». These paintings still classify Mozin under an classic aesthetic whereas Paul Huet, Isabey in few respects, Cals, Hervier and Louis Dubourg are already on the other side, that one would be tempted to call with Baudelaire the slope of modernity and from now agreed to indicate as the part of the pre-impressionism since the history of painting at the XIXth century is ordered only by comparison to the impressionist reference frame.

 

In many of his works Mozin is in the tradition of the classic marine painters and their glazed perfection, of the Dutch painters like Van de Velde, of Claude Le Lorrain, of Ozanne - Nicolas Marie Ozanne (1728-1811) - still so near (like him, won't he intended to paint the large ports of France) then closer in the tradition of Joseph Vernet and Lacroix de Marseille: calm water, carefully painted reflections, becalmed or beached high-sided vessels. This is an artistic form of expression resolutely centred on the subject and its faithful reproduction, Charles Mozin is a remarkable draughtsman (with many regards a historic genre painting) which privileges the document, with a high degree of accuracy and a scrupulous concern of the detail particularly in the representation of the ships, of their complex rigging, an aesthetics which corresponds well to the culture of the traditional order: « garden of rhythmic and sure forms...» /..." Yves Bayard LES PEINTRES DE TROUVILLE 1820 - 1940 ou la trilogie de la villégiature - in Trouville Pierre Mardaga editor Bruxelles Belgium.

 

 

 

The Eugene Boudin Museum - Honfleur, preserves of Charles Mozin: " Marine au large de la Côte de Grâce " / Marine off the Coast of Grace (Ill) among 12 works of the artist.

 

 

The Villa Montebello museum of painting of Trouville-sur-mer preserves 14 drawings and 15 paintings of which : " la traversée du gué " / the crossing of the ford and " l'Invincible gagnant le port 1855 " / the Invincible sailing to the port.

 

 

1827

Eugene Isabey make Paul Huet's acquaintance; they stay together in Trouville which they discover one or two years later than Mozin He sends to the Salon sights of Trouville that he contributes to make known at the same time as Charles Mozin and Paul Huet. One of the exhibited pictures belongs to the duchess of Berry.

1828

Paul Huet paints with Eugene Isabey, meets Charles Mozin and W. Wyld, pupil of Bonington.

1832

Paul Huet is in Trouville and meets Theodore Rousseau in Honfleur. William Turner travels in Normandy and goes past Honfleur. Among his watercolours a view from above, imaginary? sketched above the port of Honfleur.

1833

Eugene Isabey painted in Trouville. Ten years later it will make the knowledge of Boudin with Honfleur.

Yves Bayard.

 

Paul Huet (1803-1869) Painter of landscapes, animals, watercolorist and engraver. He knew Bonington and they went together to paint the sea at Honfleur and Trouville sur mer .../. he was a pupil of Pierre Narcisse Guérin then Antoine Jean Gros in the studio of which he stayed from 1819 till 1822 being close there with Bonington. At the same time he also frequented the Art college in 1820 as well as the Suisse academy in 1822 ./... Belonging by rights to the romantic movement, he also has his place among the precursors of the impressionistic vision. " E.B./G. > Musée du Louvre - Joconde database

 

The first painters of open-air came attracted by the picturesque Coast of Grace and its villages of fishermen; there they reproduce the scenes of the everyday life, the beaches and the floods. After 1860 followed the development of the balneal activity and fashionable painting, the bathers and the elegant ladies on the topic of the conversation and the walks. Soon the painters beyond the reproduction of the local scenes will retain only the restitution of the light specific to the estuary of the Seine. Pierre Bonnard painter of the South comes, from 1934, even attracted by the light of North unceasingly changing.

 

 

 

Charles F. de Lacroix (1720-1782) or Delacroix; alias Charles François Lacroix de Marseille or de Della Croce > Vues de ports de mer Utah Museum of Fine Arts.