Charles Emile Auguste Duran AKA Carolus-Duran (1856-1926)
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If you search for works by Charles Emile Auguste Duran, you may come up empty handed. A highly respected academic painter and teacher, the artist adopted the name “Carolus-Duran” early in his career which he painted and worked under. Dubbed “The Prince of Color” by fellow artist Toulouse-Lautrec, Carolus-Duran’s work is a mixture of French high-society and Spanish realism.
Carolus-Duran was born in Lille, France and studied at the Lille Academy when he was only eleven years old. He would later move to Paris and study at the Academie des Beaux-Arts. Some of his earliest work here was influenced by Courbet. After winning a scholarship, Carolus-Duran traveled to Italy and Spain in 1861 to study the work of Velazquez. He would briefly return to France, but remained in Spain until 1868.
He would generally become known for his portrait paintings of society figures in the style of the old master Realists like Titian, Rubens and Bellini. However, from time to time, Carolus-Duran would also paint informal portraits of his friends and family, as well as landscapes, nudes, still life and historical compositions. He even tried his hand at being a sculptor.
Sometimes, these informal portraits were contrary to his usual style, and portrayed other famous artists like Manet.
In 1873, Carolus-Duran opened up a school and studio for emerging painters; one of the most famous of his alumni was John Singer Sargent. In 1889, Carolus-Duran was named an officer of the Legion of Honor, and in 1905 was appointed the Director of the French Academy in Rome, succeeding Eugene Guillaume. He found great success as a painter in his lifetime, and won awards and painted until his death in 1917.
Strangely, this great academic painter somehow fell by the wayside and is not a household name, as his work would suggest that he should be. Perhaps because of the emergence of Impressionism during his lifetime, Carolus-Duran’s classical styling was of less interest to those who sought out the more fashionable and new painters.
Today his work is housed worldwide including at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Louvre in Paris.
It is also likely that many of his portraits are even hanging over the mantle in a number of family estate homes, unknown or otherwise forgotten and waiting to be found.
