Régis François Gignoux (1814–1882) was a French painter who was active in the United States from 1840 to 1870. (Aliases: Marie-François-Régis Gignoux; Régis Francois Gignoux; Régis François Gignoux; Régis-François Gignoux)

Biography

He was born in

Lyon, France Lyon (Franco-Provençal: ''Liyon'') is a city in France. It is located at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône, to the northwest of the French Alps, southeast of Paris, north of Marseille, southwest of Geneva, Switzerland, north ...

and studied at the

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

under the French historical painter Hippolyte Delaroche, who inspired Gignoux to turn his talents toward landscape painting.Christie’s catalogue, Sale 2342, Fine American Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture 28 September 2010, Lot 164 Gignoux arrived in the United States from France in 1840 and eventually opened a studio in Brooklyn, New York. He was a member of the

National Academy of Design The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Frederick Styles Agate, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, an ...

, and was the first president of the Brooklyn Art Academy.

George Inness George Inness (May 1, 1825 – August 3, 1894) was an American landscape painting, landscape painter. Now recognized as one of the most influential American artists of the nineteenth century, Inness was influenced by the Hudson River Schoo ...

John LaFarge John La Farge (March 31, 1835 – November 14, 1910) was an American artist whose career spanned illustration, murals, interior design, painting, and popular books on his Asian travels and other art-related topics. La Farge made stained glass ...

(1835–1910), and Charles Dormon Robinson were his students. By 1844, Gignoux had opened a studio in New York City and became one of the first artists to join the famous Tenth Street Studio, where other members included

Albert Bierstadt Albert Bierstadt (January 7, 1830 – February 18, 1902) was a German American painter best known for his lavish, sweeping landscapes of the American West. He joined several journeys of the Westward Expansion to paint the scenes. He was no ...

, Frederic Church, Jasper Francis Cropsey, and John Frederick Kensett. He returned to France in 1870 and died in Paris in 1882. Gignoux is best known for his meticulous renderings of Northeast American landscapes, and was the only member of the

Hudson River School The Hudson River School was a mid-19th-century American art movement embodied by a group of landscape painters whose aesthetic vision was influenced by Romanticism. Early on, the paintings typically depicted the Hudson River Valley and the sur ...

to specialize in snow scenes. The

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum in the New York City borough (New York City), borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 500,000 objects. Located near the Prospect Heig ...

, the

Corcoran Gallery of Art The Corcoran Gallery of Art is a former art museum in Washington, D.C., that is now the location of the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, a part of the George Washington University. Founded in 1869 by philanthropist William Wilson Corco ...

(Washington, DC), the

Georgia Museum of Art Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the South Caucasus * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the southeastern United States Georgia may also refer to: People and fictional characters * Georgia (name), a list of pe ...

(University of Georgia, Athens), the

High Museum of Art The High Museum of Art (colloquially the High) is the largest museum for visual art in the Southeastern United States. Located in Atlanta, Georgia (on Peachtree Street in Midtown, the city's arts district), the High is 312,000 square feet (28, ...

(Atlanta, Georgia), the

Honolulu Museum of Art The Honolulu Museum of Art (formerly the Honolulu Academy of Arts) is an art museum in Honolulu, Hawaii, Hawaii. The museum is the largest of its kind in the state, and was founded in 1922 by Anna Rice Cooke. It has one of the largest single co ...

, the Hood Museum of Art (Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire), the Museum of Art at Brigham Young University (Provo, Utah), the

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the list of largest art museums, 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 painting ...

, the

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is an art gallery, art museum in Kansas City, Missouri, Kansas City, Missouri, known for its encyclopedic collection of art from nearly every continent and culture, and especially for its extensive collection of A ...

(Kansas City, Missouri), the New York Historical Society (New York City), the Parrish Art Museum (Southampton, New York), the

Smith College Museum of Art The Smith College Museum of Art, abbreviated SCMA, is the art museum of Smith College, located in Northampton, Massachusetts, Northampton, Massachusetts. First established in 1870, the museum is part of the American Alliance of Museums, Five Coll ...

(Northampton, Massachusetts), the

United States Capitol The United States Capitol, often called the Capitol or the Capitol Building, is the Seat of government, seat of the United States Congress, the United States Congress, legislative branch of the Federal government of the United States, federal g ...

Art Collection (Washington, D. C.), the

Walters Art Museum The Walters Art Museum is a public art museum located in the Mount Vernon, Baltimore, Mount Vernon neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland. Founded and opened in 1934, it holds collections from the mid-19th century that were amassed substantially ...

(Baltimore, Maryland), the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College (Saratoga Springs, New York), and the Watson Gallery ( Wheaton College, Norton, Massachusetts) are among the public collections holding work by Régis François Gignoux. "A dramatic, newly restored 1843 painting of the interior of Mammoth Cave by Marie-Francois-Regis Gignoux has been restored as part of the conservation program for the Henry Luce III Center for the Study of American Culture at the New-York Historical Society opening in November

000 Triple zero, Zero Zero Zero, 0-0-0 or variants may refer to: * 000 (emergency telephone number), the Australian emergency telephone number * 000, the size of several small List of screw drives, screw drives * 0-0-0, a Droid (Star Wars)#0-0-0, dro ...

...In his dramatically lit interior view of Mammoth Cave, Gignoux looks from deep in the cave across the so-called "Rotunda" toward the entrance, which is illuminated by an almost mystical light from the outside. From the War of 1812 onward nitre (lime nitrate) used in making saltpeter, one of the essential elements for gunpowder, was mined and prepared from bat guano in the Rotunda. ..." Currently, Mammoth Cave is touring as part of ''The Hudson River School: Nature and the American Vision'' organized by the New-York Historical Society.

References

* Adamson, Jeremy Elwell, ''Niagara, Two Centuries of Changing Attitudes, 1697–1901'', Washington, D.C., Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1985, 57. * Grinnell, Nancy W., "The Light Beyond", ''American Art Review'', November, 1996.

Gallery

Image:Niagara, The Table Rock in Winter, oil on canvas painting by François Régis Gignoux, ca. 1847, United States Senate.jpg, ''Niagara, The Table Rock in Winter'', oil on canvas, ca. 1847, United States Senate Image:First Snow Along the Hudson River oil on canvas painting by François Régis Gignoux 1859, private collection.jpg, ''First Snow Along the Hudson River'', 1859 Image:View Of Peekskill By Régis-François Gignoux.png, ''View Of Peekskill'', oil on canvas, dated 1846

Footnotes

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gignoux, Regis Francois 1814 births 19th-century American painters French emigrants to the United States American male painters 19th-century French painters French male painters 1882 deaths École des Beaux-Arts alumni Hudson River School painters 19th-century French male artists 19th-century American male artists