LOUIS-PHILIPPE CRÉPIN (1772-1851)

FURTHER IMAGES COMING SHORTLY
 
A PAIR OF IMAGINED LANDSCAPE VIEWS
Gouache with watercolour
52 x 68 cm | 60.2 x 78 cm (Framed)
 
PROVENANCE:
Anonymous sale, Christie's, Paris, 23.03.2006, lot 327;
Private collection, France
 
 
 
 
Louis-Philippe Crépin was born in Paris, and served in the French navy as a gabier for four years before becoming an artist, an experience that informed his work throughout his life. He had an auspicious start, studying under two of the most famous French painters of the 18th century: Joseph Vernet and Hubert Robert. As a former sailor, it is unsurprising that Vernet - renowned for his grand paintings of seascapes and stormy shipwrecks - was the greater influence, and Crépin was to become one of France’s foremost marine artists. 
 
At the age of 45, having established a considerable reputation in this field already, Crépin received a twenty-year long commission to provide marine paintings for the French government, and he set up a workshop in the Ministère de Marine for this purpose. This was in a sense a consolatory role, as Crépin’s competitor Louis Garneray had been awared the position of painter to the Admiral de France; however, thanks to Crépin’s diplomacy and skill, hebecame one of France’s first two ‘Peintres de la Marine’ in 1830, a title he shared with Théodore Gudin. His first major commission in this newly-created role was to accompany the French navy on their invasion of Algiers in the same year. It seems that shortly after he had attained this grand position, Crépin felt he no longer needed to exhibit, with his last entry to the Salon in 1836. 
 
 
It is likely that Crépin’s paintings both in gouache and oils of animated, imagined landscapes such as the present pair (and they often appear in pairs) date from early on in his career, when the influence of his teachers Vernet and Robert was most prevalent. Similar examples can be found at the Château de Fontainebleau, the Louvre, and the Musée des Beauxs-Arts de Tours.