Galerie Paul Prouté

Born in Lyon in 1818, where he died in 1898, Adolphe Appian is one of the major representatives of the important landscape school that developed in the 19th century in the city of Lyon. Close to the Barbizonians (and to Corot and Daubigny in particular), Appian applied the new naturalist principles to the representation of his native region. A recognized painter, who regularly exhibited at the Salons, he was also a prolific draftsman and above all a talented engraver. Author of ninety etchings (reproductions of his paintings or original compositions, landscapes or seascapes) which he took care to have printed by Delâtre and published by Cadart, he also produced about thirty monotypes (towards which his assiduous research of the effects of inking and wiping could only lead him) which precede by about ten years the experiments of a Paul Huet and a Degas. Appian excelled in the study of the momentary effects of light and knew how to render nature in its simplest and most familiar aspects: undergrowth, streams, rocks, whose multiform physiognomy he admirably rendered. From the mountainous and wooded landscapes of Bugey and Dauphiné to the shores and harbors of southern France, water is always present in his compositions.