Charles Blanc (17 November 1813,

Castres Castres (; ''Castras'' in the Languedocian dialect of Occitan) is the sole subprefecture of the Tarn department in the Occitanie region in Southern France. It lies in the former province of Languedoc, although not in the former region of Lan ...

(Tarn) – 17 January 1882,

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

) was a French art critic.

Life and career

He was the younger brother of the French socialist politician and historian

Louis Blanc Louis Jean Joseph Charles Blanc (; ; 29 October 1811 – 6 December 1882) was a French politician and historian. A socialist who favored reforms, he called for the creation of cooperatives in order to guarantee employment for the urban poor. Alt ...

. After the February Revolution of 1848, he was director of the Department for the Visual Arts at the Ministry of the Interior. As director of the

École des Beaux-Arts École des Beaux-Arts (; ) refers to a number of influential art schools in France. The term is associated with the Beaux-Arts style in architecture and city planning that thrived in France and other countries during the late nineteenth centur ...

he reinstituted a program of copying from casts after the antique and commissioned a series of copies of Old Masters for a projected "Musée des copies" that was objected to by the school's overseers, who cashiered Blanc. He published the ''Histoire des peintres de toutes les écoles'' (Par. 1849–69, 14 vols.), which was translated into English and German. In his book, ''Chromophobia'', David Batchelor argues that Charles Blanc thought of color in art as something not to be totally relied upon. With regard to painting, Blanc says that while color is essential, its place is delegated behind the formal characteristics of composition, chiaroscuro and drawing.Batchelor, David (2000). ''Chromophobia'', pp.23-25. Blanc is the namesake of the

Charles-Blanc Prize The Charles-Blanc Prize (French: ) was an annual award of the Académie Française for the author(s) of works in the fields of History and Sociology. The prize was awarded from 1898 to 1994, and was named after French art critic and historian, ...

Works

* * ''Le trésor de la curiosité'' (1857–1858, 2 vols.) * ''L'œuvre complet de Rembrandt'' (4. Aufl. 1873, 2 vols.) * ''Grammaire des arts du dessin'' (1867, 3. Ed. 1876) * ''Ingres, sa vie et ses ouvrages'' (1870) * ''L'art dans la parure et dans le vêtement'' (1875) * ''Les artistes de mon temps'' (1876) * ''Voyage de la Haute-Égypte, observations sur les arts égyptien et arabe'' (1876)

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Blanc, Charles 1813 births 1882 deaths People from Castres French art critics 19th-century French journalists French male journalists French male writers 19th-century French male writers Collège de France faculty Members of the Académie Française Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery