MARC CHARLES GABRIEL GLEYRE

(1806-1874)

French painter, of Swiss origin, was born at Chevilly in the canton of Vaud on the 2nd of May 1806. His father and mother died while when he was some eight or nine years of age; and he was brought up by an uncle at Lyons, who sent him to the industrial school of that city.

Going to Paris as lad of seventeen or nineteen, he spent four years in close artistic study - in Hersent's studio, in Suisse's academy, in the galleries of the Louvre.The next ten years more were consumed in adventurous wanderings in Italy, Greece, Egypt, Nubia and Syria. At Cairo he was attacked with ophthalmia, and in the Lebanon he was struck down by fever; and he returned to Lyons in shattered health. On his recovery he went to Paris, created a modest studio in the rue de Universite.

Between 1840-1849, Gleyre presented many works. 

Happily for French art his high-toned labors became influential on a large number of Gleyre's younger contemporaries; when Delaroche gave up his studio of instruction he recommended his pupils to apply to Gleyre, who at once agreed to give them lessons twice a week, and characteristically refused to take any fee or payment.

Gleyre retired from public competition, and spent the rest of his life in quiet devotion to his own artistic ideals, neither seeking the easy applause of the crowd, nor turning his art into a means of aggrandizement and wealth. It was while on a visit to a Retrospective Exhibition, opened on behalf of the exiles from Alsace and Lorraine, that he died suddenly on the 5th of May 1874

 Suggested Reading List
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Charles Gleyre, 1806-1874: Life and Works

  by Hauptman, William

 The most ambitious study devoted to an 'academic' painter in modern times. Monumental in its dimensions as well as it tenacious scholarship, these two volumes offer the reader a comprehensive account of a professional career spanning almost half a century . . . A model of exacting and lucidly presented scholarship, this volume not only more than doubles the number of works recorded by Clément, but provides a wealth of information on commissions, provenance and the artist's working methods.  (from review)