Alon Zakaim Fine Art

Jacques-Émile Blanche was born in Auteuil, Paris on 1 January 1861 as a son of an eminent pathologist. His father owned a very fashionable clinic where many of Blanche’s sitters had been patients. He enjoyed an excellent cosmopolitan education, being brought up at Passy in a house once belonging to the Princesse de Lamballe. Except for a few lessons with Henri Gervex and Ferdinand Humbert (1842–1934), he had no formal training. His work was much influenced by such contemporaries as James Tissot and John Singer Sargent. The loose brushwork and subdued colouring of his portraits are also reminiscent of Edouard Manet and English 18th-century artists, especially Thomas Gainsborough. From the early 1880’s he was a frequent visitor to London, where he worked with Whistler and Sickert.

From 1890 he regularly exhibited at the Salon of the National Society of Fine Arts, he also frequently exhibited in London at the Leicester Galleries and was given a monographic show at the National Gallery, a rare distinction for a living painter. During the latter part of his career his style seemed outdated, harking back to the days of post impressionism without being touched by the artistic revolutions of the First World War period. Nonetheless, his talents as a painter of still life, portraits, landscapes, beach scenes and the occasional incident from everyday life, earned him considerable wealth and a prominent place in the art world of his time. His friends and social acquaintance ranged from the avant-garde to the upper bourgeoisie and he moved with ease from one group to the other. His many portraits are evidence of the range of his connections and the broad recognition of his talent, including not only Jean Cocteau but others among the most famous French writers of the early years of the century. While his art could not be described as progressive, he was nonetheless an open minded supporter of new talent and critic of moribund academicism.

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