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Michel, Émile (1828-1909)
Émile Michel (1828-1909) was a French landscape painter and art critic from Metz, a pupil of Auguste Migette, who exhibited at the Paris Salon for fifty-five years and was elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1892.
| 1828 | 1853 | 1872 | 1892 | 1909 |
| Born at Metzpupil of Auguste Migette | First Salonhe would exhibit until 1908 | Leaves Metz for Nancyafter the annexation | Académie des Beaux-Artselected | Dies in Parison 23 May |
École de Metz · France's great scholar of Rembrandt · Salon from 1853 to 1908
Musée d'Orsay / Soissons Museum / Académie des Beaux-Arts
A listed artist
He trained at Metz under Auguste Migette, in the circle of painters known as the École de Metz, a provincial school in the best sense. A group of men who painted their own region, its light and its weather, at a time when Paris was the only place a reputation could be made.
He exhibited at the Paris Salon from 1853 to 1908, fifty-five years, a career longer than most painters get to have. Alongside it he became one of the most respected French writers on Dutch painting of his generation, and his work on Rembrandt was read across Europe.
The School of Metz
François Émile Michel was born at Metz on 19 July 1828. His first Salon was in 1853, and he made his reputation in the usual way, canvas by canvas, in the years when a provincial painter had to be seen in Paris to exist at all.
1872, and the Road to Nancy
In 1871 the treaty that ended the Franco-Prussian war gave Metz to Germany. The inhabitants were offered a choice. Keep their French nationality and leave, or stay and become German subjects. Tens of thousands left.
In 1872, Michel left. He was forty-four, he had been born in that city and trained in it, and he settled at Nancy, sixty kilometres away on the French side of the new border.
The painting we hold is dated that year, in his own hand, on the canvas. What he painted was a woman minding her birds at the edge of a wood. No ruins, no soldiers, no allegory of the lost province. He left no statement about it, and we will not supply one.
The Scholar Who Kept Painting
In 1892 he was elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts, an honour that recognised the scholar as much as the painter. He went on painting throughout, and his canvases entered public collections. The Musée d'Orsay holds his Semailles d'automne of 1873, on deposit at the Museum of Fine Arts in Chartres, and the Soissons Museum holds another. He died in Paris on 23 May 1909.
Recognising an Émile Michel
He signs E. Michel, lower left, with a long horizontal paraph under the name and often the year abbreviated to two figures beside it. His subjects are the landscape with figures and the rural working scene, in the naturalist manner that runs from Barbizon into the second half of the century, with the landscape usually given the larger share of the canvas. That manner has its origin in the generation before his, and you can read our page on the Barbizon School.
Be careful with the name, because it is one of the most dangerous in nineteenth-century French painting. Georges Michel (1763-1843), the so-called Ruysdael of Montmartre and a precursor of Barbizon, is a different and far more expensive painter. There is also Ernest Michel (1833-1902), and the twentieth-century Michel Georges-Michel (1883-1985). A work by our Michel should always carry the forename and, ideally, the dates. Emile Michel (1828-1909).
Among the painters in our directory, his nearest neighbour is Paul Emmanuel Péraire (1829-1893), born a year after him and working the same French countryside in the same decades.
Where to See His Work
His paintings are in French public collections. The Musée d'Orsay holds Semailles d'automne, dated 1873 and on deposit at the Museum of Fine Arts in Chartres. The Soissons Museum holds another. His writings on Rembrandt and on Dutch painting remain in libraries across Europe.
Biographical information compiled from published French reference sources. Photographs of the painting by GalerieClub Fine Art.
