Eugène Isabey Biography | Oil Painting Reproductions

Eugène Isabey wanted to be a Mariner, but his father who was an artist demanded that Eugène study painting, a rare case, because usually the person wanting to be an artist, upsets and disappoints the family about that idea.

After studying with his father and duplicating the Old Masters at the Louvre, Eugène Isabey began sharing a studio in 1824 when he was twenty-one, with the landscape painter, Xavier Leprince at Honfleur, then moved to Saint-Siméon after Leprince's death. The next year, he sent a few landscape paintings to the Salon for his first formal exhibition.

In 1831, he was chosen to go on a diplomatic mission to Morocco, led by the Comte de Mornay, but he refused to go because he had just returned from a trip to Algiers, where he had painted scenes of the Royal Navy's campaign. His friend, Eugène Delacroix, went in his place and created over 100 works that are now classics of Orientalism.

Not long after, Eugène Isabey became a court painter for King Louis-Philippe and was named a Knight in the Légion d'Honneur. One of his best-known paintings was done in 1840, depicting the return of Napoleon's remains from Saint Helena aboard the frigate Belle Poule.

Eugène Isabey favored historical paintings, genre scenes, and landscapes, but also executed numerous canvases depicting tempests and shipwrecks. During a trip to England, he studied the marine works of J.M.W. Turner. He taught many students on a regular basis, including Eugène Boudin, and Johan Barthold Jongkind. In his later years, he turned from marine painting to historical scenes, usually of a violent nature, such as massacres, duels, and robberies.

Art Movement: Romanticism.
Artists Influencing Isabey: Xavier Leprince, J.M.W. Turner.
He Traveled To Algeria, England.
Painters Eugène Isabey Influenced: Eugène Boudin, Johan Barthold Jongkind, Durand-Brager.
Artist's Biography compiled by Albert L. Mansour at The World's Artist, with text adapted from Wikipedia.