Life
He enrolled in 1821 at the École des beaux-arts where he attended the workshop of Guillaume Guillon Lethière and received a solid classical training. Next he made a présentation for the prix de Rome, in 1824, in which he finished logiste. He became the companion of Eugène Devéria and an intimate of Victor Hugo as well as different Parisian Romantic circles, which had a decisive effect on his career.
He saw great success at the Salon of 1827 thanks to his Supplice de Mazeppa, was awarded a medal on the occasion of a special salon for the new school, which also showed La Naissance d'Henri IV by Eugène Devéria and La Mort de Sardanapale by Delacroix. However, this success did not continue in the young painter's career. He painted the portrait of several personalities of the era, including the most famous example, Balzac in a monk's robe, now at the musée des beaux-arts in Tours. Several of Boulanger's works are held at the maison Victor Hugo in place des Vosges, Paris.
He was illustrator of several Romantic works of Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas, as well as a series of strange lithographs on fantastical themes customarily attached to the frenetic vein which certain artists exploited in this period. La Ronde du Sabbat by Louis Boulanger is the only icon of this poorly-studied tendency.
Read more about this topic: Louis Boulanger
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“For twenty-five centuries, Western knowledge has tried to look upon the world. It has failed to understand that the world is not for the beholding. It is for hearing. It is not legible, but audible. Our science has always desired to monitor, measure, abstract, and castrate meaning, forgetting that life is full of noise and that death alone is silent: work noise, noise of man, and noise of beast. Noise bought, sold, or prohibited. Nothing essential happens in the absence of noise.”
—Jacques Attali (b. 1943)
“The clergyman is expected to be a kind of human Sunday. Things must not be done in him which are venial in the week-day classes. He is paid for this business of leading a stricter life than other people. It is his raison d’être.... This is why the clergyman is so often called a “vicar”Mhe being the person whose vicarious goodness is to stand for that of those entrusted to his charge.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“Look at your [English] ladies of quality—are they not forever parting with their husbands—forfeiting their reputations—and is their life aught but dissipation? In common genteel life, indeed, you may now and then meet with very fine girls—who have politeness, sense and conversation—but these are few—and then look at your trademen’s daughters—what are they?—poor creatures indeed! all pertness, imitation and folly.”
—Frances Burney (1752–1840)