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Cals, Adolphe Felix (1810–1880)
Adolphe-Félix Cals exhibited in the first Impressionist exhibition of 1874, alongside Monet, Degas, Renoir and Pissarro, and he was the oldest artist in the room. Born a full generation before them, a worker's son trained as an engraver, he arrived at their door by his own path, and some historians now regard him as the missing link between Corot and Impressionism.
| 1810 | 1828 | 1863 | 1874 | 1880 |
| Born in Parisa worker's son | Cogniet's studiowhich he soon leaves | Salon des Refuséswith Monet and Pissarro | First Impressionist showthe oldest artist there | Dies at Honfleuraged sixty-nine |
He hung with the group again in 1876, 1877 and 1879 · patron of the comte Armand Doria
Musée d'Orsay / Musée Eugène Boudin, Honfleur
A listed artist
Apprenticed young to the engraver Jean-Louis Anselin, he continued under Nicolas Ponce and Jean Bosq, who taught him the burin, then turned to painting in 1828 and entered the studio of Léon Cogniet. He showed at the Salon from 1835.
He exhibited at the Salon des Refusés in 1863 and hung with the Impressionists at four of their exhibitions, in 1874, 1876, 1877 and 1879. The critic Arsène Alexandre devoted a full biography to him in 1900, A.-F. Cals ou le bonheur de peindre.
The Engraver's Apprentice
He was born in Paris on 17 October 1810, into a modest working family. A frail child, he was sent to learn a trade before he learned an art. Cogniet was a neoclassical master with little sympathy for the loose, honest manner his pupil was developing. The relationship was tense and short. Cals left, and from then on answered to no school but his own eye.
From 1835 he showed portraits and landscapes at the Salon, quietly and without official honours, painting what would occupy him all his life. Humble people, peasant interiors, the scenes of everyday and family life. In his choice of subjects he prefigured Millet.
Père Martin and the Comte
In 1863 he showed at the Salon des Refusés, in the company of Monet, Degas and Pissarro, the generation whose battles he would later share. Two encounters then changed his fortunes. The dealer Pierre-Firmin Martin, the legendary père Martin who championed Jongkind and the young Impressionists, took up his work, and Cals painted portraits of Martin and his wife that now hang in the Musée Eugène Boudin. Through Martin he met the comte Armand Doria, his first great patron, who welcomed him at the château d'Orrouy in the Oise.
His palette lightened. Under the influence of Corot and of his close friend Jongkind, he worked in grey, broken tones, restoring light through small silvery touches, like dew on the surface of things.
Honfleur, 1874
From 1871 he divided his life between Paris and Honfleur, and in 1873 settled for good in the Norman port with his daughter Marie. There he joined the circle around the Saint-Siméon farm, the inn of mère Toutain where Boudin, Jongkind and the young Monet had forged the plein-air painting of the Normandy coast. He painted the farm itself, the port, the sea, and above all the people who worked it.
Then came the first Impressionist exhibition. In April 1874, at sixty-three, he accepted Monet's invitation and hung his canvases with the young insurgents. Painters of his generation were defending the Salon. He was the oldest man in the room. He died at Honfleur on 3 October 1880, two weeks short of seventy, having never stopped painting outdoors, and the group honoured his memory at their exhibition the following year.
The stooked sheaves that recur in his landscapes belong to a tradition we follow separately, in our guide to Haystacks in French Painting.
Recognising a Cals
The subjects to look for are humble people and peasant interiors, the port and the sea trades of Honfleur, and small plein-air landscapes of the Valois and Normandy. The manner is unmistakable once seen. Grey, broken tones, a silvery light built from small touches, and an absence of theatre. He never adopted, as a contemporary observed, the mauve-violet with which some painters flooded their canvases. Works are signed "Cals", most often in a lower corner.
Cals stands at the head of a line of French landscape painters our directory follows, among them Paul Emmanuel Peraire and James Desvarreux-Larpenteur. We discuss his place among the acquirable Impressionists in our guide to French Impressionist landscape painting beyond the famous names.
Where to See His Work
Cals hangs in the Musée d'Orsay, which holds his Déjeuner à Honfleur of 1875, and in the Musée Eugène Boudin at Honfleur, which holds Le Pêcheur of 1874, the very canvas shown at the first Impressionist exhibition, together with his portraits of père Martin and his wife. He is documented in Bénézit and in the artist repertory of the Musée d'Orsay.
For decades he remained one of the forgotten names of that first exhibition, overshadowed by the celebrities of the movement he helped to launch. That is changing, though his prices remain a fraction of theirs.
Biographical information compiled from the Musée d'Orsay artist repertory, the Musée Eugène Boudin, and published reference sources including Bénézit and Arsène Alexandre, A.-F. Cals ou le bonheur de peindre (1900). Photographs of the painting by GalerieClub Fine Art.
