Description

Adolphe Louis Castex-Dégrange (French, 1840 – 1918)

Still Life with Roses

Material: Oil on canvas
Dimension: 81 x 116 cm
Frame: Yes

About the Artist:

Adolphe Louis Castex-Dégrange was born on May 23, 1840 in Marseille (Bouche du Rhône). He became a French painter of genre, landscape, still lifes, flowers, and caricature. Despite his preference for a military career, in 1853, he attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, where he studied under the direction of Vibert, Reignier, then L. Guy. First admitted to the printmaking studio, he continued his studies in the flower class, before becoming a designer. Castex-Degrange participated in the Salon de Lyon from 1876 and that of Paris from 1870. In 1876, he went to settle in Paris, where he did decoration, then for three years, ceramics. He returned to Lyon in 1884 to succeed Reignier as professor of drawing and painting of flowers and of composition applied to fabric. Apart from his floral arrangements, Castex-Dégrange is the author of genre scenes, decorative works, notably for the town hall of Lyon and the Rhône prefecture, caricatures and landscapes. However, the quintessential flower painter, renewing this art by giving it a new decorative style, with a vigorous touch, in rich and luminous colors that go hand in hand with prosperity and the silk industry.