Robert Antoine Pinchon

Lugar: Rouen

Nascido: 1886

Morte: 1943

Biografia:

Robert Antoine Pinchon was a French Post-Impressionist landscape painter of the Rouen School (l'École de Rouen) who was born and spent most of his life in France. He was consistent throughout his career in his dedication to painting landscapes en plein air (i.e., outdoors). From the age of nineteen (1905 to 1907) he worked in a Fauve style but never deviated into Cubism, and, unlike others, never found that Post-Impressionism did not fulfill his artistic needs. Claude Monet referred to him as "a surprising touch in the service of a surprising eye".
Among his important works are a series of paintings of the River Seine, mostly around Rouen, and landscapes depicting places in or near Upper Normandy.
Robert Antoine Pinchon was born into an artistic and literary environment. His father, Robert Pinchon, a librarian, journalist, playwright and drama critic, was an intimate friend of Guy de Maupassant and also became a close protege of Gustave Flaubert. Maupassant and Robert Pinchon (La Tôque, as they called him) co-wrote in 1875 a script for a play entitled A la Feuille de Rose, Maison Turque, on the subject of eroticism and prostitution. The piece was presented officially on 15 May 1877 at the studio of Maurice Leloir, in front of Gustave Flaubert, Émile Zola, Ivan Turgenev and eight elegantly dressed masked women.
Since his son showed early signs of interest and aptitude in the arts, Robert Antoine's father purchased a box of oil paints and accompanied him on long Sunday painting walks. An 1898 photograph shows him painting at the age of twelve. He exhibited some of his first paintings in 1900 at fourteen years of age.
In 1900 Robert Antoine exhibited a painting in the storefront of a camera supply store owned by Dejonghe and Dumont in the rue de la République, one of the principle arteries of central Rouen. Though not a typical showspace, it was nonetheless visible to the public and located only a few meters from l'Hôtel du Dauphin et d'Espagne, known for its exhibitions of artists such as Gauguin, Monet, Pissarro, Degas, Renoir, Cézanne, Guillaumin and Sisley. The art critic Georges Dubosc wrote an article about Pinchon's painting in Le Journal de Rouen (16 March 1900).
Robert Antoine Pinchon studied at Lycée Pierre-Corneille in Rouen at the turn of the century. Two other students in his class also became well-known artists and lasting friends: Marcel Duchamp and Pierre Dumont. Drawing classes at the Lycée were given by the stern and rigorous Philippe Zacharie (1849-1915), who became assistant professor of the school in 1874. In 1879, Zacharie was named professor at the Académie de Peinture et de Dessin, which would later become the École Régionale des Beaux-Arts de Rouen.
In addition to the academic training of the Beaux-Arts, Pinchon frequented the Académie libre that had been founded in 1895-96 by Joseph Delattre (1858-1912) in the rue des Charrettes, a rallying point for independent artists of the new generation of l'École de Rouen.
In February 1903 Marcel Duchamps painted a portrait of his friend Robert Antoine Pinchon (reproduced in François Lespinasse, 2007, p. 18). From 15 June through 31 July, at the Salon Municipal des Beaux-arts de Rouen, Pinchon exhibited two paintings: La Lande à Petit-Couronne and La Seine à Croisset. The art critic Charles Hilbert Dufour wrote an article in which he makes favourable mention of the entries by Pinchon, who was still only 17.
At the 1903 Exposition des Beaux Arts held in Rouen from 14 May to 15 July, Robert Antoine Pinchon exhibited with Charles Frechon, Blanche Hoschedé-Monet and Claude Monet, who presented La Cathédrale de Rouen. Pinchon's work was noticed by Impressionist art collector François Depeaux (1853-1920), at whose home he had the opportunity to converse many times with Albert Lebourg, Camille Pissarro and Claude Monet; Monet characterized him as "a surprising touch in the service of a surprising eye" (étonnante patte au service d’un oeil surprenant).
Encouraged by Monet's praise, François Depeaux decided to take charge of the young artist's career; at first by purchasing several of Pinchon's works. This was the beginning of a relationship that would last until 1920.
In 1904 Pinchon designed the cover of a program for the Theatre Normand. The occasion was for a play by Guy de Maupassant. From 18 July to 18 September Pinchon exhibited, this time alongside Luce, Lebourg and Camoin, at the Casino de Dieppe. At the age of nineteen, while still a student at l'École des Beaux-Arts, he had his first major exhibition; at the Galerie Legrip, Rouen, 27 April–13 May 1905, with twenty-four paintings on display. Two articles in the press followed (La Dépêche de Rouen, 16 April, and Journal de Rouen, 28 April).
The same year Robert Antoine Pinchon showed in Paris for the first time. The occasion was the 1905 Salon d'Automne (18 October to 25 November), an exhibition that witnessed the birth of Fauvism. "A pot of paint has been flung in the face of the public," wrote the critic Camille Mauclair. Louis Vauxcelles coined the phrase les fauves ('the wild beasts') to describe a circle of painters exhibiting in the same room as a classical sculpture. He stated his criticism of their works by describing the sculpture as "a Donatello amongst wild beasts" (Donatello chez les fauves). Another art critic responding to the Salon d'Automne, Marcel Nicolle, wrote in the Journal de Rouen on 20 November that these works have "no relation to painting" and compared them to "the barbaric and naïve games of a child who plays with a box of colors". Of Pinchon's three paintings (Le Pont Transbordeur à Rouen, Le Pont de Boieldieu, à Rouen, Vieilles Cabanes dans l'Île Lacroix, à Rouen) he wrote: "Showing for his first time in Paris... the technique is a bit heavy, but we shouldn't be too severe toward a beginner, especially after what we saw elsewhere in the Salon". Though Pinchon had not exhibited in room VII with the fauves, his palette was already pure and his impasto thick.

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