Augustus Jules Bouvier (1827–1881) was a French-born English painter active in London. He exhibited at the British Institution and the Royal Academy. He is best known for oil paintings of women of the English aristocracy, but also was an accomplished water colourist.

Career

Augustus Bouvier was the son of Paris-born artist Jules Bouvier (1800–1867), who moved to London with his family in 1818. His brother, Gustavus Arthur Bouvier, also became a British figure painter. Bouvier was a student at the

Royal Academy The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House in Piccadilly London, England. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its ...

. He later went on to complete his studies in France and Italy. In 1852 he exhibited for the first time at the Royal Academy, he continued to exhibit there over the years, often with genre scenes and a series of idealised feminine portraits such as ''Jessica'' in 1854, ''Emily'' in 1857, and ''Hermosita'' in 1859. Bouvier was one of the first artists known to have exhibited at the

British Institution The British Institution (in full, the British Institution for Promoting the Fine Arts in the United Kingdom; founded 1805, disbanded 1867) was a private 19th-century society in London formed to exhibit the works of living and dead artists; it ...

, where he debuted with the oil painting ''The Fish Market in Boulogne''. From 1865 onward he was a member of the New Watercolour Society. While he specialized in figure paintings and portraits of elegantly dressed women in the English aristocracy, Bouvier also exhibited genre paintings (some of European scenes), and occasional domesticated mythological scenes like his ''The Three Graces'' of 1875. He also produced miniatures and sensitive watercolours. Influenced by the early aesthetic movement, his style relates to both Victorian academic painting and the

Pre-Raphaelites The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB), later known as the Pre-Raphaelites, was a group of English painters, poets, and art critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti ...

External links

Artnet.com entry
*Bénézit, Emmanuel. ''Bénézit Dictionary of Artists: English Edition''. (Originally published in French, in 1911), Paris: Gründ, 2006. 1827 births 1881 deaths 19th-century English painters English male painters English people of French descent 19th-century English male artists {{England-painter-stub