was a French academic artist and student of William-Adolphe Bouguereau. Emile Munier was born in Paris and lived with his family at 66 rue des Fosses, St. Marcel. His father, Pierre François Munier, was an artist upholsterer at the Manufacture Nationale des Gobelins and his mother, Marie Louise Carpentier, was a polisher in a cashmere cloth mill. Emile and his two brothers, François and Florimond, were gifted artists and each spent some time at the Gobelins. During Emile's training he developed a close relationship with his professor Abel Lucas and his family. He eventually married Abel's daughter Henriette. During the 1860s, Munier received three medals at the Beaux-Arts and in 1869 he exhibited at the Paris Salon. He became a great supporter of the Academic ideals and a follower of Bouguereau, whose subject matter would be an important inspiration to the young Munier. In 1867, Henriette gave birth to a son, Emile Henri. Six weeks after the birth, having contracted severe rheumatism, Henriette died prematurely. In 1871, Munier abandoned his career as an upholsterer and devoted his time solely to painting; he also began teaching classes to adults three nights a week. Sargine Augrand, a student of Abel Lucas and a close friend of Emile and Henriette (before she died), caught Emile eye; they married in 1872 and lived in a small apartment and studio. Munier frequented the studio of Bouguereau, and they became friends. In 1885 he painted, and exhibited at the Paris Salon, Trois Amis (Favourite Pets). This painting, representing a chubby girl playing on her bed with a kitten and a dog, was an extremely successful work, being reproduced in many forms and used for publicity posters by Pears Soap. With this work, Emile asserted himself as one of inters of young children and their pets; it was eventually acquired by an American collector. Among his many American patrons were Chapman H. Hyams and his wife, who were important collectors of contemporary French paintings during the 19th century and favored artists like Henner, Bouguereau, Gerôme, Vinel and Schreyer. Munier painted their portrait in 1889, and it, along with much of their collection, is now in the New Orleans Museum of Art. During the 1890s Munier continued to paint peasant, mythological and religious subjects. In 1893 he exhibited L'esprit de la chute d'eau, at the Paris Salon, a nude nymph whom is not unlike Naissance de Venus by Bouguereau.  Related Paintings of Emile Munier :. | The New Pets | A Special Moment | Le jeune paysanne | The Cherry Tree | Girl with Basket of Oranges |
Related Artists:
Peto, John Frederick
American, 1854-1907 American painter. He trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (1877-8), Philadelphia, where he became a friend of William Michael Harnett whose work was a dominant influence on his oeuvre. Peto maintained a studio in Philadelphia, exhibiting at the Academy from 1879 to 1887; he earned a living through occasional work as a photographer, sculptor and painter. After moving to Island Heights, NJ, in 1889,
James Holland
1799-1870 British English painter. As a boy he was employed for seven years to paint flowers on pottery in the factory of John Davenport ( fl 1793; d 1848) of Longport. In 1819 Holland moved to London, where he continued at first to work as a pottery painter but also undertook watercolours of flowers and natural history subjects, exhibiting his works at the Royal Academy from 1824. After 1828 oil paintings predominated over watercolours in the many pictures that he exhibited at the Royal Academy, the Society of Painters in Water-Colours (of which he was made an associate in 1835), the British Institution and the Society of British Artists. He travelled to Paris in 1831 and subsequently made repeated tours of the Continent. Buildings in European cities now became his favourite subject, and above all, scenes of Venice, which he first visited in 1835; his Venetian views have sometimes been confused with those by Richard Parkes Bonington. In 1837 he was commissioned by the Landscape Annual to make drawings in Portugal, which were engraved in the issue for 1839. He travelled again to Venice in 1845, 1851 and 1857, making sketches en route of the Low Countries, France, Switzerland and Austria. Other subjects favoured by Holland were Blackheath and Greenwich (both London), where he lived from 1830 to 1845. He was renowned for his fluent draughtsmanship and for his brilliant colouring in both oils and watercolours, making liberal use of gouache in the latter. The contents of his studio were auctioned at Christie's, London, on 26 May 1870.
FROMENT, Nicolas
French Early Renaissance Painter, ca.1430-1485