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Biography · French School
Adolphe Félix Cals
1810 to 1880
Adolphe-Félix Cals trained as an engraver and in the studio of Léon Cogniet, and showed at the official Salon from 1835 to 1870. At sixty-three he joined the first Impressionist exhibition of 1874. He spent his last years at Honfleur, painting the Saint-Siméon farm, the harbor and the people of the coast.
Original Cals Paintings for Sale
Signed Cals, sometimes with the date
Thin Sky, Thick Field
The sky is so thin you can see the threads. The field stands up in ridges.
Beside the Impressionists he kept the quieter palette he had learned from Corot and Jongkind, and a critic of the day noted that he avoided the purple-violet some of his colleagues were flooding their canvases with. In this field the straw and the gray-green do all the work.
Who Trained Cals
He first trained as an engraver, then entered the Paris studio of Léon Cogniet, the history and portrait painter.
His teacher
The painter
Click a number on the map or a place to read what happened there.
From the Salon to Saint-Siméon
The Life of Adolphe Félix Cals, Place by Place
He showed at the official Salon for thirty-five years, then spent his last decade on the Normandy coast among the painters of the new school.
He is born here on 17 October 1810. He shows at the Salon from 1835 to 1870, and with the Impressionists in 1874.
He settles here for good in 1873 and paints the Saint-Siméon farm and the harbor. He dies here on 3 October 1880.
- 1810Bornon 17 October
- 1835First Salonhe shows there until 1870
- 1863Salon des Refusésthe year of Manet's Déjeuner
- 1874First Impressionist showsix paintings
- 1880Dies at Honfleuron 3 October
Stories about Cals
1 of 3
Six paintings in 1874.
In April 1874 he showed six paintings at the first Impressionist exhibition, in the photographer Nadar's former studio on the boulevard des Capucines. He was sixty-three, one of the older painters in the group, and he showed with them again in 1876, 1877 and 1879.
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Antique Landscape Paintings17 paintings for sale
To understand
Impressionismfrom 1874 · Light becomes the subject.
To read
Haystacks in French Painting, Before and After MonetCollecting guideBiographical information compiled from museum records, including the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Fitzwilliam Museum, and published reference sources. Photographs of the painting by GalerieClub Fine Art.