The Deaths of Henri Regnault

By Marc Gotlieb

This is the first book in English on Henri Regnault (1843-71), a forgotten star of the European fin-de-si cle. A brilliant maverick who once seemed to hold the future of French painting in his hands, Regnault enjoyed a meteoric rise that was cut short when he died at the age of twenty-seven in the Franco-Prussian War. The story of his glamorous career and patriotic death colored French commemorative culture for nearly forty years--until his memory was swept away by the vast losses of World War I. In The Deaths of Henri Regnault, Marc Gotlieb reintroduces this important artist while offering a new perspective on the ultimate decline of nineteenth-century salon painting.

Gotlieb traces Regnault's trajectory after he won the prestigious Grand Prix de Rome, a fellowship that provided four years of study in Italy. Arriving in Rome, however, Regnault suffered a profound crisis of originality that led him to flee the city in favor of Spain and Morocco. But the crisis also proved productive: from Rome, Madrid, Tangier, and Paris, Regnault enthralled audiences with a bold suite of strange, seductive, and violent Orientalist paintings inspired by his exotic journey--images that, Gotlieb argues, arose precisely from the crisis that had overtaken Regnault and that in key respects was shared by his more avant-garde counterparts.

Both an in-depth look at Regnault's violent art and a vibrant essay on historical memory, The Deaths of Henri Regnault lays bare a creative legend who helped shape the collective experience of a generation.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 022627604X
• ISBN13: 9780226276045
• Release Date: June 2016
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 2.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 7.2" x 9.3"